Before he lorded over Black Gold Cooperative in the newly released Wonder Woman 1984, Pedro Pascal made nice with the Amazonian princess in the famously ill-fated NBC pilot starring Adrianne Palicki.
Landing a plum role on the buzzy 2011 TV project “was like a dream come true,” Pascal told our sister site Variety.
The David E. Kelley-penned pilot starred Palicki as Wonder Woman aka Themyscira Industries CEO Diana Themyscira aka mild-mannered Diana Prince (yes, she had two alter egos, oof). Justin Bruening (All My Children) co-starred as Steve Trevor, an Army vet who now works in the Justice Department, while Elizabeth Hurley (The Royals) played nemesis Veronica Cale.
Screenshot from ‘Wonder Woman’ pilot
Pascal, whose main TV credits at that point included arcs on The Good Wife and FX’s Lights Out, played Ed Indelicato, an LAPD detective who liaisoned with the city’s local superhero.
“It was like a dream come true,” the star of The Mandalorian recalled for Variety. “David E. Kelley’s influence on television when I was freshly out of college was so huge, and I watched every episode of [Palicki’]s Friday Night Lights. I also thought that whether it was good or not, it would definitely get picked up. So that would change my financial situation significantly, even if it was half a season before it got canceled. But it didn’t even get picked up.”
As for whether Wonder Woman 1984 helmer Patty Jenkins knew of his previous run-in with the Amazonian princess at the time he was cast as one of the sequel’s two villains, Max Lord, he was unsure, shrugging, “They must have either not have known or not cared.”
Shortly after NBC cut bait on its Wonder Woman series, TVLine asked then-network chief Robert Greenblatt about the decision. “With this kind of audience, you have to get these things absolutely right; there’s no room for error. At the end of the day, I didn’t think we had done that,” he explained. “The action is amazing. Adrianne Palicki is beautiful. Elizabeth Hurley is fantastic. It’s like any creative thing — there are going to be people who like it or don’t like it.”
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