Sarah Paulson helped financially support an early career Pedro Pascal

Over their decades-long friendship, finding ways to escape the slog of the industry became key to supporting each other, be it a night at the movies or a more direct form of aid. In fact, Paulson shares that in the past she helped The Last Of Us star make ends meet during leaner times in his now-blossoming career.

“He’s talked about this publicly,” Paulson says of Pascal, “but there were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself.”

These days, Paulson and Pascal’s reciprocity looks a little bit different: less like pooling funds for his next meal, and more like Paulson’s appearance on Pascal’s recent Saturday Night Live episode as the “mommy” to his “daddy” in a sketch set in a public high school. As two of the most in-demand actors in the industry, the duo has come a long way from fighting off post-graduate malaise at the movies, wondering how their lives would unfurl.

“My vision of it was that if I didn’t have some major exposure by the time I was twenty-nine years old, it was over, so I was constantly readjusting what it meant to commit my life to this profession, and giving up the idea of it looking like I thought it would when I was a kid,” Pascal shares of his early years in the industry. The way he sees it, changing his mindset was mostly upside: “There were so many good reasons to let that delusion go.”