Pedro Pascal reacts to Fantastic Four casting backlash over his age: 'I just was a little bit more sensitive'

"I think that it's very important for me that expectations be fulfilled," the actor adds.

Pedro Pascal isn't going to let a little age-shaming get in the way of giving Marvel fans the best Reed Richards yet!

When it was announced that the 50-year-old star would lead Marvel's First Family in the Fantastic Four: First Steps on Valentine's Day 2024, some fans argued that Pascal was too old for the role. And while Pascal is usually not one to let criticism over his appearance faze him, he recently admitted that the intense response to him playing Reed Richards hit more than usual.

"I think that sometimes the outside will find you no matter how much you try to protect yourself from it, and it just comes with the territory," Pascal told AP News during a London-based Fantastic Four fan event. "I think maybe my nerves were bigger than they usually are, and so I think I just was a little bit more sensitive to the love that people have for stories like this, because I know that they wouldn't exist if it weren't for the love that people have for these characters."

The Game of Thrones star is the third, and oldest, actor to depict the character after Ioan Gruffudd and Miles Teller played previous iterations of the character, and John Krasinski had a buzzy cameo as Reed Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

"I think that it's very important for me that expectations be fulfilled," Pascal added of ensuring that fans are happy with his portrayal. "But I also know that the only way to do that is to give it all my focus and all my heart and my body and my soul, and so that was the best I could do."

Reed will easily be the most scrutinized of Pascal's roles as the film marks Marvel's attempt at generating new interest in Fantastic Four films, after Josh Trank's 2015 reboot (which followed two prior moderately successful Fantastic films in 2005 and 2007) underperformed with audiences. But it's a challenge that Pascal doesn't shy away from.

"It was really intimidating," Pascal previously told Entertainment Weekly about taking the reins as up Richards in the upcoming film. "I relied on the people that I was around to hold me to the experience and help get me through it. Stepping into something like Game of Thrones and then going into the early days of Netflix with Narcos and then Star Wars and the world of video games with The Last of Us, each time I've felt like I couldn't top how intimidating the last one was."

He added, "They're all scary because you really want to make people happy, especially if it's something that's widely known with particular expectations around it because you want those expectations to be met. You also want to be authentic to yourself so that it can be the best that it can be for anybody who wants to be entertained by a story and travel with us into this world."

Pascal will play Reed, the brilliant scientist and inventor also known as Mister Fantastic, alongside  Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/the Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/the Thing.

"Casting was the number one challenge for the film," director Matt Shakman told EW for our April Fantastic Four cover story. "It wasn't just a search for who was the best Ben and who was the best Johnny, but also who was the best family? Who was the best married couple? Who were the best siblings and honorary uncle? So it's been very gratifying to see the incredible chemistry that the four of them have had since the beginning."

Julia Garner and Ralph Ineson will also appear as the Silver Surfer and Galactus, respectively, while Marvel veteran Robert Downey Jr. will eventually portray Doctor Doom.

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First Steps is set in a retro-futuristic version of the 1960s, which is in an alternate universe from the main Marvel Cinematic Universe story. However, as the Thunderbolts* post-credits scene revealed, the foursome will eventually make their way to the main universe/timeline.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters July 25.