“Now that I really think about it, I’m working with the first person that taught me what good television was,” she says of Murphy, naming Nip/Tuck as a seminal watch. Ford, too, has been a touchstone: Pascal can walk you through the trailer for A Single Man frame by frame. Seeing it as a tween, “I thought, that is the type of cinema I want to be a part of. It’s… kind of gaggy.” She laughs.
At The Juilliard School, Pascal was challenged to unlearn some of the training she’d gotten in Chile. One instructor gave her a transformative piece of advice: “Just do less.” Pascal’s taken it to heart. “I don’t think I had ever felt so alive while acting,” she says, her soft pink acrylic nails fidgeting with a gray wool scarf by Acne Studios. “Just letting things happen instead of doing it.”
The night I saw Richard II, claims Pascal, was not a good show for her. “I was como desconectada nomás,” she says—“a little out of it.” I found her captivating, an assessment shared by her co-star Michael Urie. “On stage, Lux is thrilling to play opposite,” he tells me. “Every night is like the first night or the last night: vital and alive.” As a colleague, she’s equally generous in the wings: “She is the first person to check on me if I seem down offstage.”
The crowd seemed charmed by her, too—including London-based, New York-born designer Conner Ives, who’d been invited that night by Pascal. Ives is known for cutting the kinds of slinky, fabulous dresses that intensify the beauty of women like Pascal. He gained mainstream recognition last year for an agenda-setting t-shirt he made, emblazoned with an instantly viral slogan: “Protect the Dolls.” The shirt was spotted on celebrities like Troye Sivan, Tilda Swinton, Addison Rae, and, most famously, Pedro Pascal, who wore one to the London premiere of Thunderbolts*. Ives created the shirt as a “love letter” to the many trans women in his life, whom he considers his muses, and to protest the rising political hostility and legislative attacks on trans people, including the Trump administration’s persecution of transgender people; all its proceeds are donated to Trans Lifeline, a trans-led charity.
Blouse by Dior; earrings by Jennifer Behr.Photographer JUANKR. Fashion Editor Natasha Royt.
