Lux Pascal Talks Pedro Pascal, Trans Identity, Netflix’s ‘Miss Carbón’

Lux Pascal is many things: a Juilliard-trained actress, the sister of Pedro Pascal (aka Hollywood’s busiest actor), a proud member of the LGBTQ community — and a trans woman now stepping into her first leading film role.

That film, Miss Carbón, will debut domestically on Netflix later this year after hitting theaters in Spain this month. Set in 2008 and based on a true story, Pascal stars as Carlita Rodríguez, a trans woman who became the first female coal miner in her hometown of Río Turbio, Argentina. Pascal, 33, was offered the role just as she was finishing Juilliard, but initially hesitated — uncertain about a project centered around a transition journey.

“I was a little bit afraid of it because I really wanted to expand my possibilities as an actress,” says Pascal, who had already played a wide range of female characters during her training. But after spending time with the real-life Rodríguez — and reframing the story as one about women in the workplace — she changed her mind. “When I met her, I was mesmerized by this air of disappointment of how the world has treated her,” Pascal recalls. “I didn’t want to shy away from showing how sometimes that sadness is just impossible to hide.”

Like her Miss Carbón character, Pascal describes herself as a survivor. She was the youngest of four children growing up in Orange County; her father, José, had fled Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship. Her mother, Veronica, died by suicide in 2000, when Lux was 7. “We all have trauma,” she says, “and I know my own trauma, and I survived it.”

Her brother Pedro, 17 years older, moved to New York in his 20s to pursue acting but would visit home twice a year. From a young age, Lux was determined to follow a similar path — telling her kindergarten class she’d become a professional actor and, when she got a bit older, gravitating toward the edgy films of David Lynch and Terrence Malick. She later appeared in Narcos alongside her brother, and in the 2019 Chilean prison drama The Prince.

“There’s something very, very few people have — talent and skill that is married with a camera that is in love with your face,” Pedro Pascal tells The Hollywood Reporter. “She has that. I am stunned when I see her act in a close-up. I’m not surprised, just stunned. Like seeing Michelle Pfeiffer’s first close-up in Tequila Sunrise.”

Lux Pascal was Miss Carbón director Agustina Macri’s first and only choice for the project, with the filmmaker telling THR that the star’s “beauty, talent and presence on screen” made her casting a no-brainer. “Although the story is inspired by real events, Lux and I always understood that we had the freedom to create a new Carlita — one shaped by her own sensibilities and emotional palette,” says Macri. “She was attentive to every detail and often proposed subtle changes to the script that made the character more honest and grounded. For me, that kind of creative dialogue has enormous value.”

Up next: comedy. Pascal is currently in Montreal shooting Love & Chaos, her first lead in an English-language indie rom-com. (“She’s a tremendous listener with a deliciously dark sense of humor,” says Love & Chaos director Drew Denny.) Big-budget fare is also on Pascal’s radar, and having trained in martial arts, she dreams of joining the X-Men universe as Jean Grey: “I feel so connected to her, both physically and mentally, and how she becomes Phoenix because she’s corrupted by the world.”

Horror is another goal, and she hopes for a shot at The Lord of the Rings (“I would really love to kill as an elf”). And yes, she’d love to act opposite her brother again — who just so happens to be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe this summer in The Fantastic Four. “It would be beautiful to finally engage in the conversations we would have when I was a kid and he was a young adult, and we were both dreaming about movies,” she says about her desire to star with Pedro in another project. “I would love that.” For his part, Pedro couldn’t agree more: “Seeing Miss Carbón feels like a rehearsal for us.”

She’s no stranger to red carpets, either, appearing with Pedro at events like last year’s Emmys and the Gladiator II premiere. “He’s such a goofball, and he’s so intelligent as well,” she says of her relationship with her brother. “He’s been extremely generous with me, and I think that he draws a lot of inspiration from me as well.” Her own public profile has grown recently, especially as Pedro has been vocal in his support — slamming a J.K. Rowling anti-trans post as “heinous” and wearing a “Protect the Dolls” shirt in a show of solidarity.

“Particularly now, there’s definitely a pressure for girls like me to live in stealth, in the sense of not talking about our identities,” Lux Pascal says. “I’ve always been concerned: Will I be more respected in the industry if I hide who I am?” She’s discussed those challenges with her brother, who encouraged her to be open: “He says, ‘At the end of the day, you just have to be yourself, and that’s when the world really starts coming together for you.’”

A version of this story appeared in the June 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.