Credit: ABCIn a recent “Actors on Actors” interview with actor Stephen Yeun of Nope, The Mandalorian actor Pedro Pascal revealed that he’d had precisely three incidents with road rage, all of which, he said, were his fault.
Pascal was discussing with Yeun how remarkable it is that you can be in a show with aliens and starship fights and another where you’re running from zombies, only to return to the genuine dangers of everyday life.
The conversation naturally turned to road rage, as Stephen Yeun recently starred in Netflix’s limited series Beef, the story about two drivers who let their own anger behind the wheel get incredibly out of hand.
‘Mandalorian’ Star Pedro Pascal Was “Humbled” By Road Rage Incident
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For his part, Pascal shared stories of his own experiences with road rage, focusing on one particular story that had happened the day before, with his sister in the car. He told Stephen Yeun:
Yesterday was a day. It was my fault. I’ve had three incidents, and they’ve all been my fault. I cut somebody off, and I look over, and there’s a big glob of saliva — like visual effects put it there, man — just dripping down the side of the passenger window. And my sister was like, “F***!”
However, unlike Yuen’s character in Beef, Pedro Pascal didn’t react. “I was in shock,” he recalled. “It didn’t trigger any rage out of me.”
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Pascal said the incident “absolutely humbled me and shocked me, scared me a little bit, disturbed me.”
This was probably the drivers’ intention – but that’s precisely what Pascal also thought.
Instead of focusing on his own feelings, he looked at the incident – and the huge gob of spit – from a different angle.
As Pascal worked to find the right words to describe his thoughts on the matter, Yeun helpfully offered that perhaps that lack of reaction was Pascal “recognizing that person’s trying to connect with you in some way.”
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Pascal immediately agreed, saying:
They want me to drink in their saliva. It made me feel guilty. I was like, “Gosh, people are going through sh**.”
Pascal’s zen and self-reflecting reaction is one that more people might want to try and take, especially now – in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic; it seems that everybody is more on edge than before, and incidents of sudden rage and confusion have been reported out of nowhere.
Whether the increase in anger is from the disease itself or simply being cooped up for so long is difficult to say, but either way, it may be helpful to reflect that everyone out there is struggling and looking for connection in some way.
What would you have done in Pedro PPascal’sshoes? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments.