(Credits: A24)
Sat 28 February 2026 12:30, UK
On the set of Eddington, a 2025 satirical neo-western that dared to deal with the topic of Covid-19 lockdowns, Pedro Pascal was taught a vital lesson by Joaquin Phoenix: you can’t do things by halves.
More specifically, Pascal learnt that you can’t do passion by halves, and, more trickily, you can’t really do violence by halves, which obviously comes with a huge caveat that the need for on-set safety is vital, something Joaquin Phoenix knows as well as anyone who has worked in the world of superhero or action films.
The entire genre, and more broadly the movie industry, still lives in the shadow of the tragic death of Brandon Lee due to a prop gun on the set of The Crow, and of the 2021 incident when Alec Baldwin discharged a prop gun, killing Halyna Hutchins while shooting Rust. Even though these are two extreme examples, they highlight the need for care on set, especially when it comes to shooting intense or violent moments.
Eddington didn’t take things that far, though, which had Pascal and Phoenix show intense chemistry as they play rival candidates in a mayoral election, so the tension has to be there, but for the former, the biggest lesson he learnt on set is that while obviously safety is key and the comfort of actors is essential, sometimes you have to just go for it.
At one point, a moment in the script got push back from Pascal, where the directions called for him to slap Phoenix, and hard, but he really didn’t want to. “I was not comfortable with slapping Joaquin. I even tried to take a stance,” Pascal told Men’s Health. He even tried to have it wiped from the story.
“[I] spoke with the stunt coordinator, and took the position that I am not comfortable with a slapping”.
But for everyone else involved, the slap was both essential and also just totally not a big deal. Phoenix was more than fine with his co-star giving him a little hit around the face, but what he wasn’t fine with was Pascal trying to fake it.
“We got to shooting it, and I tried to fake it, and Joaquin said ‘You’ve got to do it’,” Pascal recalled. With his experience, Phoenix knew that the moment wouldn’t work at all unless they actually just did the scene, built up the tension and then genuinely did the hit. It needed to be real and organic as the stars discussed, “It was a surreally fast exchange in between takes, of ‘That didn’t work’. Joaquin saying, ‘You’ve got to do it.’ And me saying ‘I do?’”
Phoenix went so far as to demand Pascal put discomfort aside and hit him. “He said ‘Yes!’ And we did it, and we went right into ‘Action’, and I smacked the shit out of him,” Pascal recalled, with Phoenix joking, “And he loved it!” Pascal made it clear that he didn’t, in fact, love whacking his co-star, but did feel like he learned a vital lesson that day. “What I loved, is that Joaquin was right, and how quickly he communicated it, and how quickly I understood it, and that felt like partnership,” he said.
It just wasn’t something that sat right with him as he explained, “It’s not nice to hit somebody—it doesn’t feel good. Many people would argue with that. I might love to break a chair or something like that, but I don’t want to hit somebody. So, that was really hard actually. It was really hard,” but with Phoenix’s help, he let himself do it, and learnt that sometimes, you have to just go all in, even if it feels uncomfortable.