Pedro Pascal revealed Tuesday that his longtime friend Sarah Paulson financially supported him during the early 2000s when “The Last of Us” star was “getting [his] ass f – – king kicked” by showbiz.
Old pal Paulson confirmed that she would give her struggling friend a portion of her own daily on-set allowance — so he could survive.
“He’s talked about this publicly, 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,” Paulson, 48, told Esquire for the magazine’s splashy April-May cover story on the suddenly ubiquitous star.
Pascal, also 48, and Paulson began their 30-year friendship in 1993 when they both attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
According to the “Game of Thrones” actor, he fell into a group of friends — that included Paulson — who recently graduated from the prestigious LaGuardia HS, famously featured in the 1980 film “Fame.”
“I got an entire New York family through them,” the Chilean-American actor recalled. “To the point where they still forget I didn’t actually go to high school with them.”
The duo instantly bonded over their shared love of cinema.
“We would go to see movies all the time in those years,” said Paulson. “And we would get so lost in them. You can fill in the blanks about the why of that however you like, but I think there were things we wanted to escape mentally, emotionally, spiritually.”
The Post reached out to Pascal and Paulson for comment.
Following his graduation from NYU, “The Mandalorian” star worked as a waiter at several restaurants — and getting fired from most of them — while auditioning for commercials or industrial films.
“I was getting my ass f – – king kicked,” Pascal told the outlet.
Pascal also recalled how he would often get very close to securing a role, only for another person to ultimately beat him.
Despite that, Pascal kept auditioning.
“I died so many deaths,” said Pascal. “My vision of it was that if I didn’t have some major exposure by the time I was 29 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.”
Now, Paulson has said that she is thrilled “everybody wants a piece” of her friend, who has rocketed into stardom both on television and on the internet.
“You just want him to succeed,” gushed Paulson.
“And that to me, I feel like, is the sign of a major movie star. I’m ready for him to take the reins from the guys from romantic comedies past, like Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson and all these guys.”
“He can be all that. Let’s remake ‘Die Hard’ with Pedro. Remake all the ‘Lethal Weapon’ movies with Pedro.”
Pascal went viral last month during an after-party for the 2023 Oscars when he told journalist Amelia Dimoldenberg — after spotting Grammy winner Rihanna — that he would shove her out of the way in order to meet the “Umbrella” singer.
“I will literally shove you out of the way,” said Pascal to Dimoldenberg, who understood where the actor was coming from.
“Obviously, like, push me out of the way and go see Rihanna, that’s what I would do,” Dimoldenberg said. “No offense.”
The Pascal-led Disney+ series “The Mandalorian” airs a new episode every Wednesday.
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