Shenanigans by Sho

Okay, let’s address this daddy business. Daddy is a word that comes up in the Pedro Pascal conversation and his various social-media fan accounts a lot. Like, a lot a lot. He plays around with it, too, saying things like “I am your cool, slutty daddy” into cameras on red carpets. A sketch on his episode of SNL addressed it head-on, as the cast yelled things like “You are so father,” “We have to make you daddy,” and “You have us in a choke hold”—things that are both chaste and explicit, childlike and informed by deep fetish-speak. Sexual but not. It’s, um, kinda weird. Paulson, who made a cameo in the sketch (as Mommy), says: “I’ve been dealing with this mommy business for a few years now, and I actually don’t understand what a lot of it means.”

Craig Mazin has a theory about Pascal’s daddy appeal: “I think everybody either has fond memories of a positive father figure in their life or they have a terrible gaping space in their heart where a positive father figure ought to have been. Nostalgia or longing for let’s call it nontoxic masculinity. And he has that, but he also has this expressive pain behind his eyes.”

Pascal shrugs. “Plus, I’m old.”

Whatever it is, Paulson says, “Knowing Pedro as intimately as I do, I would not want him to be my daddy, personally. I want him to be my pal that I can hang out with until all hours of the night, but Daddy?”

“You know, Ed… I don’t know if I, uh, well… agree that a ship can only have one captain.”

“Yes, well, I suppose if you found the absolutely two perfect people, then they could potentially…”

“Co-captain?” “Co-captain.”

People are not all good, Leia.