Pedro Pascal Offers Hugs To His Haters
His responses are so perfect!
Pedro Pascal knows that the best way to fight hate is with love. During his recent Fantastic Four: First Steps press tour, the actor has been at the center of a suspiciously timed social media backlash, in which online trolls have accused him of being too physically affectionate with his co-stars. Notably, these aren’t really accusations of sexual impropriety, but rather strange assertions that he hugs or holds hands with his female co-stars too much. While Pascal has stayed silent on this bizarre controversy, he finally acknowledged the haters by responding to a string of rude comments on his Instagram.
The anti-Pascal posts went viral towards the end of July, many of which used similar GIFs from Dexter to denote suspicion of the actor. The abrupt and sound-alike nature of the posts led many to deduce Pascal might be the target of a smear campaign, especially since Vanity Fair pointed out in a June 24 profile that J.K. Rowling’s supporters tried to paint a Comic-Con video of the actor taking Vanessa Kirby’s hand as overtly forward. “I found it a lovely gesture and was very glad to squeeze his hand back,” Kirby said of the exchange.
This all happened after Pascal vocally criticized the Harry Potter author for her anti-trans views at the end of April.
Despite blowing up online, Pascal ignored the chatter until the comments section on his Aug. 5 Instagram post (in which he was supporting a friend’s movie premiere) started flooding with those same spammy Dexter GIFs. Rather than get upset at the hate, Pascal offered hugs and loving emojis to the trolls trying to come for him.
These angry commenters may hate hugs, but maybe Pascal’s kind offers can help them change their tune.
