For a trans person, being seen for who you are by someone close to you can be life-changing.
That’s what actress Lux Pascal says happened when her brother, The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal, first saw her as his little sister.
In a new piece for Elle, the Emmy-nominated actor — who’s rumored to be starring in Todd Haynes’ new gay romance — interviews his sister ahead of the release of her upcoming feature, Netflix’s Miss Carbón. The film, which marks Lux’s first starring role, is a biopic about Carlita Antonella RodrÃguez, who became the first woman coal miner in her hometown of RÃo Turbio, Argentina.
In the interview, Lux says that her older brother, who stayed in New York to pursue acting after the family moved back to Chile, would bring her movies and CDs from U.S., which helped shape her into the actor she is today. She also says that his early encouragement with her gender journey helped shape her into the woman she is today.
“Not only did you give me artistic tools, but I remember thinking that if there was anyone in the family who knew who I was before the rest of the people did, I just knew that you knew,” Lux says to her brother during the conversation. “Even the play that you wrote [Flaca Loves Bone, about a trans heroine and a young man who fall in love], I weirdly feel like I was connected to it before I knew.”
Continuing the train of thought, she adds, “I remember I was 16 or something and, for the first time, I was going out with this man who was a lot older than me, and I remember you were looking at me and you told me, because you were afraid, and it was just a little fling, but you were like, ‘Uh, yeah, it’s because you’re my little sister.’ I don’t know if you even remember that moment, but it was just so affirming for me to be like, Yeah, he knows. He knows who I am. You were treating me like your little sister from the very beginning.”
“Well, you, in my imagination, are my muse,” Pedro replies, to which his sister reacts with surprise.
“Yeah, for so long,” he says, citing Flaca Loves Bone, which he wrote in 2009, as “such early evidence” for the inspiration he took from sister. “When I’m building things in my imagination, I see you before I see myself.”
Miss Carbón is already out in Spain and is set to premiere on Netflix later this year.
This article originally appeared on Out: Lux Pascal recalls the significance of Pedro Pascal first calling her ‘my little sister’
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