Pedro Pascal learned cello for a year before ‘Behemoth!’ was even greenlit

Pedro Pascal started taking cello lessons more than a year before “Behemoth!” was even given the go-ahead to shoot. “If you could hear it, you would think I was killing an animal,” the actor jokes about his playing — but the prep behind Tony Gilroy’s new film was no laughing matter to him.

Pascal first sat down for lunch with Gilroy in late July 2025 about taking the lead as Alex Serian, a gifted cellist who returns to Los Angeles after 20 years on the road. Before anything was signed, and before he knew whether the project would hold together, he went straight to cellists Timothy Loo and Charlie Tyler and got to work.

Cameras rolled across Los Angeles at the end of that October, with a final day in Vienna. Every lunch break and weekend went to “the next thing, and the next thing.” Pascal describes the shoot as “a highly intense lip sync” that left him back-footed the whole time.

“It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done,” he tells Variety. “And it was also my favorite filmmaking experience ever.” The feeling lingers. “I miss ‘Behemoth!’ more than I miss anything I’ve ever done,” he adds. “I miss the character.”

A role worth the wait

Pascal spent two decades in small stage and TV parts before “Game of Thrones” changed his life at 39, followed by “The Mandalorian” and “The Last of Us.” Alex Serian, he says, is the part that finally uses what he can do with his face when he has no lines — a character who says more with a bow than with words.

Written and directed by Gilroy, the Searchlight Pictures film premiered as the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival on Oct. 2 and opens Dec. 4. Pascal also coughed up a line from the upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday,” teased his role in Todd Haynes’ “De Noche,” and sent a message to his awards-season sparring partner Kieran Culkin.