“I Am an Immigrant. My Parents Fled a Dictatorship.” The Moment at Cannes Where Pedro Pascal Said Out Loud What His Entire Life Has Been Building Toward.

May 17, 2025. A press conference in the south of France. A question about immigration. And PEDRO PASCAL — one of the most famous men alive — said three sentences that stopped the room and then the internet. This is the story of where those sentences came from.

May 17, 2025. The 78th Cannes Film Festival. The press conference for Eddington — Ari Aster’s political black comedy about America fracturing under the weight of its own contradictions. A journalist asks the cast about re-entering the United States after making a film with such pointed political content. About whether they were afraid.

PEDRO PASCAL leans into the microphone. And says this:

“Fear is the way that they win. So keep telling the stories and expressing yourself and fighting. Do not let them make you scared. Fight back. Don’t let them win.”

And then, earlier in the same press conference, when asked directly about immigration policy:

“I want people to be safe and to be protected, and I want very much to live on the right side of history. I am an immigrant. My parents are refugees from Chile. We fled a dictatorship, and I was privileged enough to grow up in the U.S. after asylum in Denmark. If it weren’t for that, I don’t know what would have happened to us. I stand by those protections.”

The room went quiet in the way rooms go quiet when someone says a true thing simply. The internet went the other direction entirely.

“Fear is the way that they win. So keep telling the stories and expressing yourself and fighting. Don’t let them win.” — Pedro Pascal, Cannes, May 17, 2025

To understand what Pedro Pascal said at Cannes, you have to understand what his family lived through before he was old enough to remember any of it.

PEDRO PASCAL was born on April 2, 1975, in Santiago, Chile. His parents — Verónica Pascal Ureta, a child psychologist, and José Balmaceda Riera, a fertility doctor — were active opponents of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship, which had seized power in a coup two years earlier. Their political activities made Chile dangerous for them. Their son was nine months old.

The family fled. They sought asylum in Denmark first — a country that opened its borders to Chilean political refugees during the Pinochet years. Then they made their way to the United States, settling eventually in San Antonio, Texas, and later in Orange County, California. PEDRO PASCAL grew up between languages, between cultures, between the country of his birth and the country that gave his family safety — holding both, belonging entirely to neither.

He has 34 first cousins still in Chile. He said so in his Saturday Night Live monologue in 2023, and said it the way you say something that is simply true — not a punchline, not a political statement, just a fact of his life that the audience might not have expected to hear.

Pedro Pascal at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2025.

Apr 1975

Born in Santiago, Chile. Parents are active opponents of Pinochet’s military regime.

Late 1975

Family flees Chile. Nine months old. Seeks asylum in Denmark, then the United States.

1980s–90s

Grows up between worlds. San Antonio, Texas. Orange County, California. Chilean roots, American life, 34 cousins across the ocean.

2000

Mother passes away. He takes her name — Pascal — as his stage name. Carries her forward into everything that follows.

May 2025

Cannes Film Festival. Asked about immigration. Says: “I am an immigrant. My parents are refugees. Fear is the way they win.”

Jan 2026

Artists for Aid benefit concert. Co-hosts with Bella Hadid at the Fonda Theatre, Los Angeles. All proceeds to Palestinian and Sudanese humanitarian relief.

The Cannes statement did not come from nowhere. It was not an impulsive moment. It was the most visible expression of a pattern of engagement that had been building for years.

On Christmas Eve 2023, Pedro called publicly for a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict and urged donations to Doctors Without Borders. In March 2025, he posted in support of Ukraine on Instagram: “Stay on the right side of history. Glory to Ukraine.” In May 2025, he signed an open letter alongside other artists criticizing what they described as the film industry’s passivity in the face of the ongoing situation in Gaza. In January 2026, he and Bella Hadid co-hosted a benefit concert at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles — all proceeds split between Sudanese and Palestinian humanitarian organizations.

He also wore a shirt reading “Protect the Dolls” on his 50th birthday — a phrase rooted in affirming transgender women — which helped raise over $70,000 for Trans Lifeline. He signed the ACLU’s letter, alongside 400 other artists, opposing government threats to free speech. He commented publicly on J.K. Rowling’s anti-transgender positions. He posted Pride captions without brand partnerships or PR approval.

This is not a man who discovered political engagement in 2025. This is a man who has been building toward it for a long time — who has, quietly and consistently, chosen the side of the people who most need someone with his platform to choose it.

“I want people to be safe and protected. I want to live on the right side of history. I am an immigrant. My parents are refugees from Chile. We fled a dictatorship and I was privileged enough to grow up in the United States after asylum in Denmark. If it weren’t for that, I don’t know what would have happened to us. I stand by those protections.” — Pedro Pascal, Cannes, May 17, 2025. In full. As he said it.

What “I am an immigrant” means — in his mouth, in that room, at that moment

There is a specific quality to the way PEDRO PASCAL said “I am an immigrant” at Cannes that separated it from the kinds of celebrity political statements that often read as rehearsed, managed, carefully worded to cause minimum offense.

He prefaced it by admitting he was afraid of the question. He said, directly, that he was not informed enough to really address it. He acknowledged the intimidation. And then — because acknowledging the fear and naming it is not the same as surrendering to it — he said exactly what he felt, using the most personal terms available to him. Not a policy argument. Not a talking point. His own life. His own parents. The specific country they fled and the specific regime they fled from and the specific country that gave them safety when they needed it.

That is the most politically effective kind of statement anyone can make. Not because it is strategically designed to be — but because it is simply and completely true, and truth told simply is the hardest thing in the world to argue with.

He ended with something that also does not sound like a prepared statement: “I’m too afraid of your question, I hardly remember what it was.” A self-deprecating admission of nerves, delivered immediately after one of the most personally courageous things he has said publicly. The combination — the fear acknowledged and then pushed through — is, if you have been paying attention, entirely consistent with everything Pedro Pascal has always been.

“I am an immigrant. My parents are refugees from Chile. We fled a dictatorship.” — Three sentences. His whole origin story. Said in public because someone needed to say it.

The actor and the man — and why they are not separate

One of the more revealing things Pedro Pascal has said about himself is that he finds it strange to be described as “highly private.” He does not experience himself that way. He draws a line — firm, consistent, never negotiable — between his professional identity and certain aspects of his personal life. But on the things he considers important: his sister, his heritage, his politics, his values — he is not private at all. He says what he means. He uses his name, his platform, and his body to show up.

The son of Chilean refugees. The brother of a transgender woman. The man who carries his mother’s name. The actor who plays fathers, protectors, men who show up for the people they love at whatever personal cost the story demands.

And at Cannes, in May 2025, in a room full of journalists asking difficult questions about a country in the process of deciding who gets to belong to it: a man who stood up and said, simply, that he belongs to that history. That his family was allowed to be safe when they needed safety. That he stands by those protections for everyone who needs them now.

“Fear is the way they win.”

He has been living that sentence since he was nine months old and his parents carried him out of a country that had become dangerous. He did not discover it at Cannes. He just finally said it out loud, in the way that makes it impossible to unhear.

“Fear is the way they win. So keep telling the stories and expressing yourself and fighting. Don’t let them win.” — Pedro Pascal. Still fighting. Still here. Still entirely himself.