Entertainment
Pedro Pascal Retells His Family’s Immigration Story – And It’s Harrowing
Pedro Pascal has become one of Hollywood’s most renowned and revered celebrities, yet his success would not have been possible without his parents’ perilous voyage from Chile.
On this week’s episode of the “Smartless” podcast, the “Last of Us” actor detailed how he and his family became political refugees in the 1970s after being forced to flee former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Pascal described his parents as “young, liberal college students” at the time, and while they were not “revolutionaries by any stretch of the imagination,” his mother’s first cousin was “very involved in the opposition movement against the military regime.”
He went on to add that a victim of a gunfight – one in which none of his parents were involved – was brought to his house so his father, who was undertaking a residency at a nearby hospital, could “tend to the wound.” His parents agreed to “hide” the individual “for a while.”
Pedro Pascal Retells His Family’s Immigration Story – And It’s Harrowing
Pascal, who was only four months old at the time, stated that the person who brought the victim to their home was then “taken into custody and tortured – and gave names.”
“They came looking for my parents, so then my parents had to go into hiding for about six months,” he explained, adding that his parents eventually found a method to physically climb over the wall of the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago and “demand asylum.”
“And it worked,” he declared.
Before coming to the United States, Pascal and his family were granted refuge in Denmark. His parents raised him and his siblings in Texas and Southern California, respectively.
The “Game of Thrones” star attributes his success to his parents, a notion he expressed in his “Saturday Night Live” monologue in February when he claimed they were “so brave.”
“Without them, I wouldn’t be in this wonderful country and I certainly wouldn’t be standing here with you all tonight.”
SOURCE – (CNN)