Actor Pedro Pascal stars in The Mandalorian, The Last of Us and is one of the stars of the Fantastic Four film being released by Marvel next month. You may have heard that Pascal made some news back in April when he attacked author J.K. Rowling over her stance on trans issues.
"The Last of Us" star Pedro Pascal accused author J.K. Rowling of "heinous loser behavior" for her celebratory post following a U.K. court decision that did not recognize transgender women as women.
Pascal hit hard at the "Harry Potter" author in the comment section of an Instagram video that called for a total boycott of Rowling's popular franchise.
The activist Tariq Raouf posted the video last week criticizing Rowling for “reveling” in the U.K. Supreme Court’s ruling this month that the Equality Act defines women as those born biologically female.
Here's the post on X that upset people.
I love it when a plan comes together.#SupremeCourt #WomensRights pic.twitter.com/agOkWmhPgb
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 16, 2025
And here's the call for an anti-Harry Potter jihad designed to punish Rowling, as if that sort of thing hasn't already been happening for years at this point. This is the video Pascal co-signed, calling Rowling a "heinous loser."
Today, Variety published an interview with Pascal and once again he returned to his attack on Rowling. I'll get to that in a second but first I have to just set the table by pointing out what an embarrassing spectacle a Variety interview is.
Over lunch in London, Pascal is a grand raconteur who tells stories with his hands and uses funny voices and loves to swear and drink cocktails and murder a cheese plate. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. At the same time, he’ll press right up against the sad and raw and confusing parts of being alive. His insides are on his outsides. He cries easily. He laughs loudly...
Just how smitten is the world with this actor? While hosting the Critics Choice Awards, Chelsea Handler cited 2023 as “the year everyone became horny for Pedro Pascal.” A New Yorker cartoon featured a therapist reassuring his client, “It’s not strange at all—lately, a lot of people are reporting that their faith in humanity is riding entirely on whether or not Pedro Pascal is as nice as he seems.”...
Pascal is happiest and most comfortable when the people around him are happy and comfortable, and because he is naturally so curious and warm, there’s a sense of immediate safety with him. You’re grateful to be in his light.
Retch! This is just revolting even by the usual standards of celebrity journalism which are not very high. About halfway into this story, we get to his politics. And it turns out the interviewer was there with him in London not long after the UK Supreme Court decision that led to all the attacks on Rowling mentions above. So at the time this was still fresh.
On Instagram, Pascal is forthright about his progressive values, posting about his horror over political headlines as well as sending love to his siblings and championing his and others’ projects. The week before our meeting, the UK Supreme Court has released a landmark anti-trans ruling limiting the legal definition of a woman to the basis of biological sex. J.K. Rowling, who has largely funded the UK’s war on the trans community, celebrated the ruling in a cruelly glib Instagram post. Pascal, ferociously protective of his baby sister, Lux, called out Rowling’s rotten glee on Instagram as “heinous LOSER behavior.”
Some tried to frame it as a man trying to bully a woman into silence. “But it is heinous loser behavior,” Balmaceda says. “And he said that as the older brother to someone saying that our little sister doesn’t exist.” As it grew into a larger story, Pascal felt briefly like “that kid that got sent to the principal’s office a lot for behavioral issues in public schools in Texas feeling scared and thinking, What’d I do?” But something else worried him more. “The one thing that I would say I agonized over a little bit was just, ‘Am I helping? Am I fucking helping?’ It’s a situation that deserves the utmost elegance so that something can actually happen, and people will actually be protected. Listen, I want to protect the people I love. But it goes beyond that. Bullies make me fucking sick.”
So that's really why Pedro Pascal wants to cancel J.K. Rowling. He believes she's somehow responsible for a Supreme Court decision and that it would somehow impact his younger brother turned sister Lux.
I can't blame the guy for wanting to defend his family even if I disagree with his views, but he's right to wonder whether his attacks are really helping his cause. In my view, telling a woman to shut up and trying to punish her is not the kind of thing that wins converts. On the contrary, it's exactly the kind of thing that turns off so many people that the other side eventually wins at the Supreme Court.
I'm a science fiction reader who grew up surrounded by novels and comic books. The Fantastic Four was always my favorite as a kid and I've been waiting for Marvel to make a decent movie out of the title since I was about ten. But I don't think having another woke actor spouting bile at 70% of his audience is going to help make that film a success. If he keeps talking about this he could become the male Rachel Zegler and help sink this project.
He admits that entering the Marvel universe has not been without jitters: “I’m more aware of disgruntlement around my casting than anything I’ve ever done. ‘He’s too old. He’s not right. He needs to shave.’”
Ultimately, I can almost always separate the person from the work. Lots of great Hollywood actors are leftist nuts, but they can still be fun to watch in a good film. But not everyone feels the way I do. Some people don't like giving money to people who talk down to them. Marvel studio people must be freaking out right now.
