Exclusive: Pedro Pascal Offered Paddington 3 Villain Role
We've exclusively learned that Pedro Pascal has been offered the role of the bad guy in Paddington in Peru.
Update June 2023: While Pedro Pascal appeared in line for a role in Paddington in Peru, the villain role went to Antonio Banderas as Hunter Cabot.
Well, it looks like the guy who’s gotten famous playing heroic babysitters could finally go back to the dark side (and in a potentially good movie — we didn’t forget you, Wonder Woman 1984). Our trusted and proven sources tell us Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) has been offered the role of the bad guy for Paddington 3, aka Paddington in Peru. The threequel will mark the feature directorial debut of Dougal Wilson, who was previously known chiefly for music videos for artists such as Coldplay and Massive Attack.
It seems possible — if not very, very likely — that the inspiration to contact Pedro Pascal to play the villain of Paddington 3 is the overwhelming love his character gives its predecessor, 2017’s Paddington 2, in last year’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Pascal plays billionaire Javi who pays Nick Cage (Nicolas Cage) a cool million to attend his birthday party. Javi adores Paddington 2 — as did most critics and audiences — and gives Cage the actor’s first ever viewing of the sequel.
As much as it would no doubt thrill fans to know Pedro Pascal had accepted the antagonist role in Paddington in Peru, right now we can only report that he’s been offered the part. We don’t know whether or not he will accept it. The fame he’s earned as leads of both The Mandalorian and HBO’s The Last of Us have put him in high demand, and it could be that he won’t have the time to film Paddington 3.
While the voice of Paddington himself, Ben Whishaw, cast doubts about the threequel in February when he said there wasn’t even a script yet for Paddington 3, in early April Deadline reported filming on Paddington in Peru is scheduled to begin on July 24. That’s about a month and a half from now, and Pedro Pascal is currently filming another long-awaited sequel — Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2.
Considering filming on the first Gladiator took five months, there’s no guarantee Pedro Pascal will be free in time to make Paddington 3. On the other hand, we don’t yet know the nature of the Last of Us star’s role in Gladiator 2, and he may not be needed on set as much.
Pedro Pascal’s screen acting career began in the mid-1990s, but he first started gaining widespread attention as the brash and vengeful Oberyn Martell, aka the Red Viper, in Season 4 of HBO’s Game of Thrones. He gained more leading man attention playing the real-life DEA Agent Javier F. Peña in Netflix‘s Narcos. He became a bonafide superstar as (mainly the voice of) Din Djarin on Disney+’s flagship series The Mandalorian, and later as Joel in the post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us.
