Pedro Pascal played the memorable character Oberyn Martell on HBO’s hit fantasy show Game of Thrones, and now we’ve learned a little more about how it all began. David Benioff, who co-created Game of Thrones, told Variety that Pascal’s audition for the show was far from ordinary (at least for the time).
Benioff said Pascal auditioned through a video he filmed on his iPhone–and the quality of the video wasn’t great. But in the end, it didn’t matter much because his performance convinced Benioff to hire him.
“First of all, it was an iPhone selfie audition, which was unusual,” Benioff said. “And this wasn’t one of the new-fangled iPhones with the fancy cameras. It looked like sh**; it was shot vertical; the whole thing was very amateurish. Except for the performance, which was intense and believable and just right.”
Pascal got the audition by happenstance. His friend, actor Sarah Paulson, agreed to send his audition video to her actor friend Amanda Peet, who is married to Benioff.
Pascal’s Game of Thrones character was only on the show for one season, in Season 4. But after the show, Pascal’s profile as an actor grew substantially, and he landed a starring role on Netflix’s Narcos while he played a main character in the 2018 movie The Equalizer 2 opposite Denzel Washington.
Pascal currently plays the lead role in the Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian, while he plays a mysterious man in the upcoming superhero movie Wonder Woman 1984. Pascal is also lined up to play a role in the absurd Nicolas Cage movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
