The full story of Sarah Paulson and Pedro Pascal’s decades-long relationship

Hollywood stars Sarah Paulson and Pedro Pascal appeared together at the official West End opening night of Evita in London on Tuesday (1 July). If you spotted them and wondered why they looked so inseparable, that might have something to do with their 30 year friendship.

Sarah Paulson and Pedro Pascal, nowadays probably best known for their respective roles in American Horror Story, American Crime Story, The Last of Us and Gladiator II, met way back in the 90s when they were both young, wide-eyed, hopeful actors trying to make it big in showbiz.

In 2014, Interview magazine published a conversation between Paulson and Pascal in which Paulson described having known him “since I was 18”.

The pair met when Pedro Pascal was attending NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and she had graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, the high school which inspired the hit movie Fame!.

“I met you, Sarah Paulson, in September of 1993, my first month in New York City,” Pascal, who at the time was playing Oberyn Martell on Game of Thrones, recalled. “I was really lucky because my first friend at NYU lived in Brooklyn, Kristen, and went to high school with you, so your guys’ posse kind of adopted me.

“And do you remember the names of the people in that posse besides Kristen?” Paulson replied.

“I remember everybody!” Pascal said. “There are a couple of things that I probably shouldn’t say about all of us—we were 18-year-olds in New York City in 1993. [But] I remember all of us going to the Upper East Side. I insisted that we all go see that movie Fearless.“

“Yeah, Fearless. I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” Paulson said.

“There’s a well of pain that lives right behind his eyes”

In Vanity Fair, Sarah Paulson, who is in a long-term relationship with fellow actor Holland Taylor, said of her bestie Pedro Pascal: “No one was more fun. But he was also… sad.

“There’s a well of pain that lives right behind his eyes that he’s never tried to hide from, and I think it’s what makes him so translucent as an actor. It was just magnetic for me as a young person and still is today.”

In an interview for Esquire in April 2025, Pascal spoke again of the group of friends he made in the early years in New York City, saying he “got an entire New York family through them to the point where they still forget I didn’t actually go to high school with them”.

In the published conversation, it is clear Paulson thinks fondly of Pascal and their time as young people in New York together.

“It’s a wonder we survived. When I think about the debauchery, the things that we did, the kind of s**t we were pulling and the way we were behaving, I don’t even know how we made it to the next morning, much less 20 years later,” Paulson recalled.

In the later 90s, the two went through a “a period of estrangement” which Paulson clarified was “where we didn’t talk as much, but it was never because we were fighting”.

The distance in their friendship was because Paulson moved to LA to pursue her acting career, with Pascal describing her ascendancy as: the “first of all of us that started working and never stopped”.

However, the distance did not last too long and the pair became close friends again after Pascal graduated in 1997 and also moved to LA to pursue his Hollywood dreams.

Pascal explained: “I came to LA for a bit and then went back to New York. Even after going back to New York, we somehow went into chapter two of our friendship that—we attached to each other and haven’t been able to let go.”

“That is for damn sure. I think when you get knocked off by a cabbie and you see Woody Harrelson and you see Fearless all in one day, you’re either bonded for life or you’ll never see each other again,” Paulson insisted.

Pascal returned to New York in 2000 after only getting a few small roles in TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Touched by an Angel.

During this time, Pascal struggled to make rent and feed himself, so Paulson would give him money to keep himself afloat during the tough times.

“He’s talked about this publicly,” Paulson also Esquire in April 2025, “but there were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself.”

Pascal told the publication he “died so many deaths” when he experienced failed audition after failed audition

“My vision of it was that if I didn’t have some major exposure by the time I was twenty-nine years old, it was over, so I was constantly readjusting what it meant to commit my life to this profession, and giving up the idea of it looking like I thought it would when I was a kid.

“There were so many good reasons to let that delusion go.”

Similarly, in Vanity Fair, Pascal said of this time: “In my 30s I was supposed to have a career. Past 29 without a career meant that it was over, definitely.”

As the years continued to pass and their careers developed – Paulson secured a role on American Horror Story in the early 2010s which would lead to many more in the Ryan Murphy-verse and Pascal appeared in Game of Thrones and was the lead on Narcos – the two actors remained faithful friends.

They frequently appeared on the red carpet together at premieres and award shows, and were spotted together at award show after parties.

They would also regularly tag each other in Instagram posts and share birthday posts for one another with sweet captions.

“Happy Birthday @pascalispunk Long standing, always enduring, ever evolving friendships feel particularly poignant these days- Woody Harrelson, Central Park, and Fearless forever. I love you now and always. Here’s to more of all of it,” Paulson wrote in 2020.

“Dancing to Prince with this woman for more than half my life. Happy birthday you f**king goddess,” Pascal also wrote for Paulson’s birthday in 2020.

In 2019, when Pascal made his Broadway debut as Edmund in William Shakespeare’s King Lear, Paulson was in the audience to support him and took to Instagram to share her pride at his accomplishment.

“I love you @pascalispunk what an extraordinarily moving thing to witness your Broadway debut. I am in awe of you. ❤️ @kinglearbway,” she captioned the image of the two of them.

The 2020s have seen a stratospheric rise for Pascal, with his leads in hit TV shows The Mandalorian and The Last of Us and roles in Wonder Woman 1984, Gladiator II and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. He became both a household name and the internet’s Daddy.

In 2023, Pascal hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time – on the same date his mother passed away, who he lost when he was 24 – and Paulson appeared in a sketch with him.

Paulson told Vanity Fair that Pascal hosting SNL was “a night we didn’t want to end”.

“If there had been a camera on me when it was happening – and there’d been a slow push in – it would’ve shown me watching his life begin,” Paulson said.

“Because he was so, so present, and having this wild time. And he had no idea that it was going so well, and with the timing of his mother and this moment in his career, it was like a rebirth.”

In 2023 Pedro was included on the Time 100 Most Influential People and it was Paulson who wrote his blurb.

“Pedro Pascal is the whole motherf**king deal. Sorry, no other word will do. And I’m not biased, in spite of my knowing for 30 years what you all are just coming to understand about Pedro – I’m not showing off, just simply lucky to have had his phone number my entire adult life. (And no, I won’t give it to you.)

“What I will give you is the guarantee that everything you hope he is, HE IS: powerful, soulful, hilarious, goofy, capable of having the deepest conversations, willing to hold your hair back when you’re sick, and in possession of the broadest shoulders to lean on.

“He is no figment – he’s real. That’s why he has landed so surely in the cosmos, with such shattering force. It isn’t actually his Adonis form you’re responding to. It’s the beauty he carries inside.

“His interior light burns so bright, it’s simply taken some time for your eyes to adjust. But now that you’ve seen him, you know too.”