Pedro Pascal's Anxiety

A hug under the San Diego Comic-Con logos

In the frame is a dark-haired man with short hair and a gray beard, wearing a black printed t-shirt. He has his arm around the shoulder of a blonde woman in a black spaghetti-strap top, who is smiling and looking off to the side. Behind them is a backdrop with the Comic-Con International logo repeated across it: yellow letters and an eye inside a blue square.

This is Pedro Pascal and his co-star from The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Vanessa Kirby. The exact date of the shot couldn't be pinned down from the frame itself: the logo points to the festival in San Diego, where the team was promoting the film, but there were several such appearances. The meme is sometimes referred to as a series, but here it's a single photo with no caption, and there's no ready-made joke built into it.

What Pascal himself has said about his anxiety

The actor has spoken publicly about anxiety more than once. In an interview with Men's Health published on July 23, 2025, he said that during hard times he had always turned to friends and family, then lost that habit, and went back to it when things got difficult again: he calls talking and connecting with people his anchor.

Earlier still, on the red carpet with Bella Ramsey for the show The Last of Us in 2023, he explained why he's often photographed with a hand on his stomach: he said that's exactly where he feels the anxiety. Ramsey copied the pose at the time in support.

A hand on the stomach, a hand on the shoulder: where the gestures came from

The hand-holding appeared in photos long before the meme wave. Vanessa Kirby told Vanity Fair in an interview that on the Comic-Con panel they were both extremely nervous in front of thousands of people, and she took his hand so he'd know they were together in it; she called it a comforting gesture.

Pascal himself told the film's crew that walking out in front of the cameras is frightening, so they hold on to each other to remind themselves that they're not alone. Both of them described the public closeness at press appearances as mutual support.

July 2025: anxiety that only "kicks in" next to co-stars

The meme wave started in July 2025, during the film's promotional campaign. A clip of Pascal putting his arm around Kirby and holding her hand went viral; people on social media started talking about selective anxiety that only shows up next to attractive co-stars. The nickname "anxiety for the pretty ones" caught on right around then.

The jokes split into two camps. Some were self-deprecating: one popular meme describes trying to pull the same anxiety trick at work and the conversation with HR that follows. Some were accusatory, reading the gestures as overly familiar behavior. That same meme flips easily, though, since there are photos of the actor hugging male co-stars just the same way.

Captions people come up with for shots like this

The examples below were written for this particular photo.

"Me: about to get through this day calmly. My anxiety:" — the joke runs on the contrast between the warm, smiling frame and text about panic. "When I explained I'm holding your hand because I'm nervous" — the joke rests on how awkward the excuse sounds. "Coworker: why did you just hug me? Me:" — here the frame turns into a silent answer, and the pause does all the work.

If you need a version without recognizable faces, the same text gets slapped onto any photo of a hug: the anxiety caption stays, and only the context changes.