Pedro Pascal has revealed that he took an Ambien on the night he got the job to play Joel in HBO’s The Last of Us, and because of the sleeping drug he took, he forgot he landed the gig.
On The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Pascal recalled that fateful night. He was in London at the time and the rest of the team on The Last of Us was in Los Angeles.
“I got sent these scripts. I was told Craig Mazin wants you to read these scripts and if you like them, he’d like to talk to you. I loved Chernobyl. It was unbelievable. I read the first script for [The Last of Us] and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah yeah, I want to meet him!’ We talked. We fell in love,” Pascal said.
At this point, Pascal was asked if he could stay up that evening a bit later to talk to Neil Druckmann, the director of The Last of Us game. Pascal did, and the call went well. To calm his nerves and help him sleep, Pascal took an Ambien.
“At that point, it’s really late, and I’ve got to get up in the morning. I take an Ambien to go to sleep, because they’ve got my adrenaline going and my hopes up,” he said.
After he took the Ambien, Pascal received a call saying he got the job–the only thing was, the sleeping aid impaired him so much that he didn’t remember right away.
“I was excited, I guess, but I didn’t remember. I woke up in the morning, and the first thing that occurred to me was like, ‘Oh man, I really want that job,'” Pascal said.
Due to the time difference between Los Angeles and London, Pascal was concerned that he would be up all day in London, pacing around and worrying about whether or not he got the job. But then he looked at his phone and saw some congratulatory texts. “Oh yeah, I got the job!” Pascal remembers saying at the time when he realized he did, in fact, already book the gig to play Joel.
HBO’s The Last of Us is one of most popular TV shows right now, and it’s setting viewership records at the Game of Thrones network.
The latest episode of The Last of Us featured Nick Offerman as Bill and Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus) as Frank. The episode’s plot was biggest deviation from the game so far. For more on the episode, check out GameSpot’s breakdown, which contains massive spoilers.
New episodes of The Last of Us air Sunday nights on HBO, leading up to the Season 1 finale on March 12. HBO just recently announced that Season 2 is in the works, and fans believe it will follow the events of The Last of Us: Part II, and introduce Abby, among other characters.
For more, check out a trailer for this Sunday’s next episode.
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