Pascal dons different armour for ‘1984’

NEW YORK — When Pedro Pascal started to think about his “Wonder

Woman 1984” villain Max Lord, one name came to mind: Gordon Gekko.

But director Patty Jenkins had something different in mind than the Michael Douglas character. (Both say it wasn’t Donald Trump, either.)

“She pulled me away from that,” Pascal said. “She was like, ‘that’s not the polish that we’re after.”‘

It was a nerve-wracking realization for Pascal, who thought he’d be able to hide behind the slickness of a cold and calculating finance guy. But it was a call that he ended up loving in the end.

“What we went after was so much more unpredictable and exposed,” he said.

“The thing that would ultimately anchor me to him was far more vulnerable than what a Gordon Gekko-type would be.”

In the film, which debuts in theatres and on streaming services. on Christmas Day, Max Lord is a divorced dad, minor television personality and wannabe oil tycoon whose wealth is mostly smoke and mirrors until he gets hold of a powerful, wishgranting stone.

“He’s an immigrant who is trying to live up to appearing to be his idea of the American dream,” Jenkins said.

It was producer Charles Roven, who he’d worked with on “Triple Frontier,” who initially called Pascal saying that Jenkins wanted to meet.

“I just adored him. I thought he was such a great guy and such an interesting person and an excellent actor,” Jenkins said. “But when I was sitting and thinking about who could pull this off, I just knew that he could do it. There was something about Pedro that I knew he could hit every different mark and also reveal a side of himself I wasn’t sure that even he had gotten to use yet.”

Pascal had long been a fan of Jenkins’ work: He remembers seeing “Monster” in a Manhattan theatre and having to wait until the credits played out to leave because he was crying so hard, and being especially moved by the No Man’s Land sequence in “Wonder Woman.”

In between the two films, they’d also crossed paths when Jenkins directed him in a pilot that never got picked up. So when the chance to work with her again came up, he knew what his answer was going to be.

The Associated Press