As everybody is now aware, Pedro Pascal can play a gruff and grizzled protector pretty well. While he's most recently become TikTok's favorite TV Dad as a result of The Last of Us and his interviews with co-star Bella Ramsey, he was pretty good at the TV Dad act long before Joel and Ellie even met—and that was, of course, because of The Mandalorian where he was tasked with carrying around an adorable piece of cargo that we first knew as Baby Yoda.
The beautiful relationship between the two probably hit a peak at the conclusion of Season 2 when, after realizing that Grogu needed to realize his potential destiny as a Jedi, he let the Foundling go to be with Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker. Of course, the pair would reunite later in the series when Grogu decided his love for his father was too strong.
Speaking with Collider's Perri Nemiroff, one of the show's directors Rachel Morrison has been explaining the key challenges involved in projecting that bond between the two given the unorthodox nature of what the audience is being shown—namely a man without a face, and something that isn't real! And it turns out, Pascal—who recently admitted to mainly doing voiceover work on the series—helps out from the very beginning of that process to create the bond.
Getting Emotion Out of a Tin Can Man
While an extremely emotive series—particularly via the bond between Din Djarin and Grogu—it is undoubtedly something of a problem to solve in terms of how you actually show that emotion when you're working with two characters, neither of whom can actually emote properly, given that one never shows his face and the other is made of rubber. For Morrison, though, this wasn't as much of an issue as it was something to motivate her.
"I really have always loved a good challenge. I think I'm drawn to things that I haven't done before or that feel challenging in some way. So I think there was actually this part of me that was excited by, how do you get emotion out of a man in a mask and a puppet effectively, right?"
She was assisted in the fact that Pascal would pre-record his lines—before doing another pass later for the final recording—which would help assist those on set making the series, including his body and stunt doubles Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder. This would allow them to visualize how Din Djarin would stand, where he would be positioned, and give those in charge of pre-visualization a better chance of accurately depicting what was best for the narrative, on-screen.
"So I wanted to be able to try to answer it for myself, knowing obviously that these first couple of seasons are working, so somehow they are getting emotion and character despite these challenges. To answer your question, Pedro pre-taped — they do a first pass of the script, so you have some sense of what's being said and kind of the intonation and inflection, all of that and how it's all working, and we’re pre-vizing things. We're working a lot out before we actually get in there. But then you also have the benefit of, it's like a Christmas of ADR. You can always change the lines later, which is not something you get to do in most circumstances. So I think that's a nice cushion to fall back on."
The Mandalorian's first three seasons are now streaming on Disney+.