Despite Sarah Paulson and Pedro Pascal’s enduring friendship, they’ve never shared the screen save for a brief Saturday Night Live cameo — and the American Horror Story star has the perfect idea to change that.
“I definitely want to do a rom-com,” Paulson, 49, exclusively told Us Weekly at the October 4 premiere of Hold Your Breath. “Oh my, God. I want to do a rom-com. … I’d like to work with Pedro Pascal on a rom-com.”
Paulson — who also pitched John Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as potential romantic comedy leading men — and Pascal, 49, have been friends since they were teenagers.
“Our life together [used to be] just hanging around, eating In N’ Out burgers — even though I don’t eat meat anymore,” Paulson recalled to Us. “There was a time in our lives when both of us were a lot less busy and we spent a lot of time in our cars eating french fries and milkshakes and … he was the king of dragging me to every scary movie possible.”
Paulson added, “I would just go kicking and screaming because I was like, ‘When this is over, you’re going to go home and I’m going to go home and I’ll be by myself.’”
Paulson and The Last of Us star met in 1993 when they both lived in New York City.
“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,” Pascal previously gushed to Paulson during a September 2014 profile for Interview magazine. “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 the movie Fearless. There were eight of us sitting next to each other and, as I remember, we were all sobbing by the end of it.”
The pair briefly lost touch when Paulson left the Big Apple for Los Angeles, but they eventually reconnected after Pascal also moved out west.
While there’s been no formal concept for Paulson and Pascal’s potential big-screen romantic team-up, she’s been busy becoming a certified Scream Queen. Paulson currently stars in Hold Your Breath, a horror movie set in 1930s Oklahoma as a woman becomes convinced a sinister presence threatens her family. (She previously starred in other horror movies, including Run, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Glass and Bird Box.)
“I feel like [the horror genre is] a playground where you’re living in the world of extremes,” she told Us earlier this month. “You’re also living in the world of [when] the circumstances for the character are about life and death. And so, therefore, all of my natural tendencies to have big reactions fit right in.”
She added, “My mother called me Sarah Bernhardt since I was a small child, and I knew, one day, it would come in handy. And here it has. My penchant for drama has found its way to a fruitful place.”
Hold Your Breath is currently streaming on Hulu.
With reporting by Mariel Turner
