Pedro Pascal briefly forgot he was in NBC's 'very risky' Wonder Woman pilot

For Pedro Pascal, being cast in Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman 1984 was such an incredible moment that he briefly forgot he'd previously been in another project centered around DC Comics' Amazon warrior.

In 2011, Pascal appeared in David E. Kelley and NBC's failed Wonder Woman pilot, starring Adrianne Palicki as the titular heroine. Pascal played Ed Indelicato, Diana's liaison to the LAPD, the Commissioner Gordon to her Batman. Yet, that experience was far from his mind when Jenkins offered him the role of villainous Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984.

"Getting Wonder Woman 1984 blew my mind so much that anything that had ever happened to me prior, I don't recall; I had no association," Pascal recently told EW. "And that's not to say that getting the Wonder Woman pilot from 2011 wasn't a party for me, and I was devastated it didn't get picked up."

The prospective series reimagined Diana Prince as both a Los Angeles-based superhero and as her alter ego Diana Themyscira, the leader of a large corporation that merchandises the Wonder Woman brand to fund her crime-fighting side hustle. Cary Elwes, Elizabeth Hurley, and Tracie Thoms also starred.

"I love Adrianne Palicki. I love David E. Kelley. And I thought it was a very, very risky and interesting take in terms of what they were trying to do," said Pascal.

And the feeling is mutual, according to Palicki. "He's just such a sweetheart. I really, really enjoyed working with him. What a kind person from the beginning," Palicki told EW in September when we spoke to her about the pilot.

Pascal believes the pilot slipped his mind because of the overwhelming cultural impact of 2017's Wonder Woman and how excited he was about reuniting with Jenkins, who he has admired since 2003's Monster and directed him in the 2015 pilot Exposed.

"It's only after [being cast] that I start to remember the association and the strangeness of being part of two different Wonder Woman experiences because the first Wonder Woman that Patty and Gal [Gadot] made together with Charles Roven took a dominant position in every sense that in many ways," he said. "You can never say this is the only Wonder Woman [because] Lynda Carter will be with us for the rest of our lives. But in terms of our current era of superhero movies, it seems like there was nothing before this Wonder Woman and so to be in the next one was bonkers because I also did a pilot with Patty Jenkins that didn't go to series."

He continued: "I can remember what theatre and what time of night I saw Monster. It was 19th Street on Broadway in Manhattan, and I went into the stall of the bathroom after it was over to let out more crying because of how it affected me. So she was always a hero of mine and no one I expected to meet. Doing that pilot with her, the idea of getting to meet Patty Jenkins in the audition room was a really, really big deal to me. And so I couldn't have imagined getting to work with her like I did in the next Wonder Woman project. And seriously, it was one of the best experiences of my life."

Wonder Woman 1984 is available to stream on HBO Max until Jan. 24.

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