Paul Wesley revealed that, before his The Last of Us fame, Pedro Pascal “screen tested” for a part on The Vampire Diaries spinoff series The Originals.
“He didn’t get the part,” Wesley, 41, shared during the Tuesday, August 22, episode of the “Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum” podcast. “By the way, he’s a wonderful actor.”
The major revelation came about as Wesley was discussing being typecast following his The Vampire Diaries role. He played Stefan Salvatore on The CW series from 2009 to 2017.
“I think to myself, ‘What if Pedro Pascal got The Vampire Diaries spinoff?’” Wesley shared, alluding to the fact that Pascal’s career would have been very different.
Previously, The Vampire Diaries creator Julie Plec revealed that she was “obsessed” when Pascal auditioned for the role of Marcel, which eventually went to Charles Michael Davis.
“I was in full Pedro Pascal fan girl mode and was just like, ‘Oh my God, he’s so great,’” she gushed on Entertainment Weekly’s “Binge” podcast in August 2021. “But Charles, like, I mean, ‘I am the king,’ right? He just had that swagger.”
Pascal, 48, for his part has been candid about how he struggled to get roles at the beginning of his career.
“I was getting my ass f–king kicked,” Pascal told Esquire in April 2023, recalling the years he lived in New York City as a struggling actor. “I guess that, and this delusional self-determination, and no real skill at anything else, is what kept me going.”
While he didn’t nab The Originals role, years prior, Pascal appeared in another vampire series. Following The Last of Us premiere in January, fans started to unearth Pascal’s past TV appearances and post them to TikTok. One of the most talked-about was his one-episode stint as Eddie on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“What I just found out — which I am very excited about, and I can’t wait to get my phone back so that I can look it up myself — is that Sarah Michelle Gellar remembers me,” Pascal told Access at The Mandalorian premiere in March. “I remember every moment of shooting that episode, as brief as it was. She was such a kind scene partner, and we had the best time.”
Pascal was, of course, referring to the moment Gellar, 46, posted a still of their Buffy scene on Instagram writing, “When #Mother met #Father.”
He went on to say that it was “a super big deal” for him to play Eddie in the show’s season 4 premiere. Recalling the episode’s plot Pascal said he got to “hang out” with Gellar for “a little bit” onscreen, but when they parted ways he gets turned into vampire and is eventually killed.
Pascal gushed that he could remember “absolutely everything” from his day on the Buffy set in 1999 during a separate interview with Entertainment Tonight.
“I remember [Gellar] had ice cream in her trailer, and she gave me some,” he said. “She went back to her trailer, she got me some ice cream and she shared — ’cause it was a night shoot, it was in the middle of the night, and we were on the UCLA campus. They hadn’t built their college sets yet.”
He added, “I was doing a play in Long Beach, and I had to miss opening night because we had to shoot this very, very short moment. I remember everything. I could go on, and on and on. I could give you step by step, every detail.”
