LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Bella Ramsey, 19, is a familiar face now after playing Ellie in the television adaptation of the 2013 video game ‘The Last of Us’. Recently in an interview, Ramsey, who has no preferred pronouns, raised her concerns regarding the excess of “daddy” jokes on her ‘The Last of Us’ co-star Pedro Pascal. Ramsey, who also starred in ‘Game of Thrones’, said in the interview that she is “worried” as the joke has now “gone too far.”
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the 19-year-old star recounted, “I very much played into it at the beginning, but now I’m worried it’s gone too far.” Insinuating that Pascal loved it in the beginning, she put forward her concern about the 48-year-old ‘Narcos’ actor’s opinion on the trend. The ‘Hilda’ star said, “I don’t know whether he’s still loving it.” However, Ramsey also said that she would ask Pascal about the same. “I need to ask him. He’s a global phenomenon, as he should be, because he’s pretty spectacular,” she noted.
How did the ‘Internet Daddy’ trend start?
From the beginning of his career, Pascal has been playing father figures who do not want to care much but end up caring nonetheless. After essaying similar roles in ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘The Mandalorian’, when the Chilean-American actor played a father (yet again) in ‘The Last of Us’, his status of being the Internet Daddy became solidified. In ‘The Mandalorian’, he plays the titular character who becomes the father figure for young Grogu. In ‘The Last of Us’, he is not only a father to his daughter Sarah, but also a father figure to Ellie. While the term has its roots in the innocent trope, it quickly escalated to include s***al intonations.
However, Pascal believes the moniker is a little “role-related” and has nothing to do with real life. In an appearance in The Hollywood Reporter’s Drama Actor Round Table, he said, “There was a period where the Mandalorian is very daddy to baby Grogu, and Joel is very daddy to Ellie,” before declaring, “These are daddy parts. That’s what it is.” He then added, “I’m not a daddy and I’m not going to be a daddy.”
'Still trying to figure it out'
During an appearance on BBC’s ‘The Graham Norton Show’, Pascal once opened up about the new internet trend that made him everyone’s favorite. On being asked by the host of the show, “What are you, are you the daddy of the internet? What’s internet daddy?,” the star replied, “Me! Uh, internet daddy. I’m still trying to figure it out. I feel like it changes, there’s daddy, there’s zaddy. Zaddy, with a Z. I’ll take it all.”
In most cases, Pascal has taken a playful approach to the issue and even referred to himself as “sl***y daddy” in another interview. When the interviewer asked, “You know you’re the daddy of the Internet, right?” he replied, “Yep, I am your cool, sl***y daddy.”