Sarah Paulson financially helped friend Pedro Pascal early in his career

CNN  — 

Pedro Pascal and Sarah Paulson are two of Hollywood’s most in-demand actors, often pictured at red carpet events together, but that hasn’t always been the case during their three decades-long friendship.

As young actors struggling to navigate the industry, Paulson would help her friend make ends meet.

“There were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself,” she told Esquire magazine in an interview published Tuesday.

The pair first met when Pascal was studying at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 1993 and befriended a group of recent LaGuardia High graduates, a group that included Paulson.

“We would go to see movies all the time in those years, and we would get so lost in them,” Paulson told Esquire. “You can fill in the blanks about the why of that however you like, but I think there were things we wanted to escape mentally, emotionally, spiritually.”

Their friendship has endured, with glimpses of it appearing on their respective Instagram pages and during red carpet events, such as the 2016 SAG Awards. Paulson even featured in Pascal’s SNL debut two months ago, appearing in a sketch that poked fun at their internet personas of “Mommy” and “Daddy.”

Hosting SNL was the latest confirmation that Pascal’s career has exploded into the stratosphere.

The 48-year-old is currently fronting two blockbuster TV series – playing Joel in HBO’s “The Last of Us” and the title character on Disney+’s “The Mandalorian.” He will star in Pedro Almodóvar’s new film “Strange Way of Life” alongside Ethan Hawke later this year.

But, after graduating NYU in 1997, Pascal struggled to definitively break into the industry. He appeared in an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and three episodes of “Undressed,” waited tables at several New York restaurants, and auditioned for commercials and films.

“I died so many deaths,” Pascal recalled. “My vision of it was that if I didn’t have some major exposure by the time I was 29 years old, it was over, so I was constantly readjusting what it meant to commit my life to this profession, and giving up the idea of it looking like I thought it would when I was a kid. There were so many good reasons to let that delusion go.”

Pascal’s unconventional career trajectory and surrogate father role in “The Last of Us” have earned him the internet’s adoration, and the sexually-charged title of “Daddy” – the hashtag “PedroPascalDaddy,” has more than 8.2 billion views on TikTok alone.

“He’s a part of some spectacularly successful things,” Paulson added. “But sometimes in those situations, the show is the superstar. It’s really exciting to see that he is the thing that is becoming the superstar out of this.”