The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal just told a hilarious story about working with Nicolas Cage on their movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent while eating extremely hot chicken wings on First We Feast’s popular YouTube interview series Hot Ones.
Remember that scene where Pascal’s character, Javi Gutierrez, shows Cage his room full of Nicolas Cage memorabilia in Massive Talent? Well, it turns out that the pair improvised that scene with the sequin pillow that has Cage’s face on it.
“My character had this collector’s room of everything from his movies and a life-sized model of him from Face-Off, and we put this pillow in this scene. He wanted to get rid of it, and I said, No, I think it should stay. And he was like, fine,” Pascal told Hot Ones host Sean Evans of his behind-the-scenes conversation with Cage.
Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal Pillow Talk
Then, while they were shooting the scene, Cage — who was MovieMaker‘s cover star last spring when the movie came out — decided to have a little fun with Pascal.
“So he points to it [the pillow] and he’s like, ‘That’s weird,’ and he changed his face. And I was like, ‘No, it’s nice,’ and I put it back, and they kept it in the movie,” Pascal said, pantomiming how Cage changed the direction of the sequins to make his face on the pillow disappear.
“That was definitely an improvised moment, the one time I was disagreeing with him,” Pascal added.
Also Read: Nicolas Cage: The Man, The Myth, The Meme (Cover Story)
Evans also asked Pascal to list his four favorite Cage movies, as if he could create his own Mount Rushmore of Cage’s greatest movie characters.
“Raising Arizona, Peggy Sue Got Married, Face-Off — I got a soft spot for Moonstruck, man,” Pascal said. “…It was really amazing to do homework for that movie and rewatch all of these movies that I’ve already seen so many times.”
He also gave special mention to Spike Jonze’s 2002 comedy-drama Adaptation in which Cage plays twin brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman.
“Adaptation is maybe one of the best screen performances in the history of American cinema, but the four that I mentioned have a personal place in my development as an aspiring actor and to this day in my DNA a little bit, where I realize that I’m doing something and I’m saying something in a way that I have to stop and take a second and realize, Oh, I got that from Vampire’s Kiss or something,” Pascal said.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, directed by Tom Gormican who co-wrote the screenplay with Kevin Etten, stars Cage as a caricatured version of himself — a movie star who finds himself in major debt and on the outs with his wife and daughter. In an attempt to make a quick buck, he agrees to attend the birthday party of a rich man named Javi Gutierrez (Pascal)… but Cage soon finds out that Javi has a lot more surprises planned than just his birthday bash.
The cast also includes Lily Mo Sheen, Sharon Horgan, Alessandra Mastronardi, Ike Barinholtz, Tiffany Haddish, and Katrin Vankova.
In addition to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and The Last of Us, Pascal is also known for roles in Narcos, The Mandalorian, Game of Thrones, Wonder Woman, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Triple Frontier, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Watch Pedro Pascal’s full Hot Ones interview below.

Main Image: Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierrez and Nicolas Cage as himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Photo Credit: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate.