Pedro Pascal Admits He Would Have Done 'Anything' to Work with Pedro Almodóvar

From the outside looking in, actor Pedro Pascal's career looks like a dream come true with hit roles in Disney's "The Mandalorian" and HBO's "The Last of Us." But the actor admits that he recently scored a personal best in being able to work with auteur Pedro Almodóvar.

Pascal, who stars in Almodóvar's upcoming queer short film "Strange Way of Life" opposite Ethan Hawke and Manu Rios, says he would have done "anything" Almodóvar asked, reported Indie Wire.

Almodóvar's 30-minute western will have its debut at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Pascal plays a man who comes back to visit his longtime sheriff friend-slash-lover after 25 years apart, and he could not be more excited about it.

"It could have been anything that he asked me to do, and I would have done it without question," he told Insider. "He absolutely opened up an entire world of storytelling, color, culture, rebellion, and sexuality that was just absolutely intoxicating, dangerous, hilarious, heartbreaking, and encompassing the whole spectrum, but with such a signature style."

Pascal added, "To get to work with Ethan [Hawke], whose movies I've seen since I was a little kid, who I've seen on stage off-Broadway, on Broadway, whose books I've read, whose plays I've seen him direct, and big movie, small movies, horror movies. It was really an incredible opportunity to go, learn, and to enjoy the experience of being on the level of people like that. Taking it all in was incredible."

Almodóvar previously described "Strange Way of Life" as a "queer western in the sense that there are two men, and they love each other, and they behave in that situation in an opposite way" during an appearance on pop star Dua Lipa's "Dua Lipa: At Your Service."

About Any Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," Almodóvar previously said that he thinks it was a "wonderful movie." But "I never believed that they would give me complete freedom and independence to make what I wanted," he explained, having been approached to direct the movie. "Nobody told me that – they said, 'You can do whatever you want,' but I knew that there was a limitation."

He added, "The relation between these two guys is animalistic. It was a physical relationship. The punch of the movie comes when they have to separate, and Heath Ledger discovers that he can't think about leaving. That's a strong discovery. But until that moment, it is animalistic, and for me it was impossible to have that in the movie because it was a Hollywood movie. You could not have these two guys fucking all the time."

Whew! Are you excited to see what Almodóvar does with "Strange Way of Life"?