The Last of Us Star Pedro Pascal Wins People’s Choice Male TV Star of The Year

It’s Pedro Pascal’s world and we’re just living in it. Days after being cast as Reed Richards in the Marvel Cinematic Universe effectively receiving the role of a lifetime, Pascal has earned some major hardware for his trophy case. Sunday, Pascal walked away with the Male TV Star of the Year Award at the 2024 People’s Choice Awards for his performance as Joel Miller in HBO’s The Last of Us. The Last of Us also won the People’s Choice Award for Best Drama Show of the Year.

Pascal beat the field in a crowded category. Other nominees for Male TV Star of the Year included Chase Stokes (Outer Banks), Jason Sudeikis (Ted Lasso), Jeremy Allen White (The Bear), Kieran Culkin (Succession), Samuel L. Jackson (Secret Invasion), Steve Martin (Only Murders in the Building), and Tom Hiddleston (Loki).

The second season of The Last of Us is now filming, with Pascal looking to wrap that up before moving onto filming his role in Marvel’s The Fantastic Four. Little is known about the plot of the show’s sophomore outing, and series creator Craig Mazin has hinted it may not necessarily adapt the same story of the video game it’s based on.

“I’m never gonna say there are things that are gonna happen in the show that happened in the game. You never know what we’re gonna do,” Mazin revealed in an interview last year. “But I will say that it is the adventure, the journey is the point. There are things that will shock people, things that were in the game, things that were not in the game, and that’s okay. As long as they’re purposeful, they’re not there to just simply shock. We are not interested in creating social media fear. We just want to tell the story the way we think it should be told.”

“Will there be furor? Yeah, probably. I mean, there usually is, starting even with casting,” Mazin continued. “We knew they were the exact right person to cast and they had to go through quite a few months of people being awful on social media until they saw what we saw. That, to me, is the point. We don’t operate to either make people happy on social media or avoid making them upset. We just do what we think is right, and we hope that people come along for the ride and enjoy it.”

The first season of The Last of Us is now streaming on Max while the second season has yet to set a release date.