Paul Mescal has shared the advice that director Ridley Scott gave him before they began shooting Gladiator II.
Gladiator II is the long-awaited sequel to Scott’s 2000 film Gladiator, which starred Russell Crowe, Connie Nielsen and Joaquin Phoenix. Now, the director returns with an equally cast led by Pascal and featuring Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington in supporting roles. David Scarpa has penned the script.
Mescal, who first found success playing Connell in the BBC coming-of-age series Normal People, stars as Lucius Verus in the new film. He takes on the role from Spencer Treat Clark, who played Lucius in the original Gladiator. Understandably, when he first arrived on-set, Mescal was initially a little intimidated by the size of the project.
“I think the very first day, and just coming out and there being a couple of hundred to a thousand SAs [supporting artists/extras], with fires burning, and the walls of Morocco, I was like, ‘Ooh – this is fucking big,’” Mescal recalled during a conversation with Total Film. Fortunately, the director had some words of wisdom for the young actor.
“But the first thing [Ridley] said before filming was, ‘Your nerves are no fucking good to me.’” Mescal joked that the blunt statement was “Ridley in a nutshell,” but admitted that it was the “perfect thing to say, because it’s so liberating. He’s totally right.”
A recent trailer for the Gladiator sequel revealed that Mescal’s character is the, Maximus, who was played by Crowe in the original film. “Take your father’s strength,” Nielsen’s character tells Lucius in the clip, “his name was Maximus, and I see him in you.”
The sequel will take place two decades after the original film and follows Lucius as he trains to be a gladiator like his father. “I think the legacy he’s left with that first film is extraordinary,” Mescal enthused, “I think I was consciously trying to get out of my head, like, the projections that people might have of what this film means.”
Despite his appreciation for Crowe’s original performance, the sequel star resisted watching the original Gladiator after he was cast in the film. He then watched it on New Year’s Day, which he described as “amazing,” but admitted that there’s “nothing to be gained as[by studying it in preparation] as it’s a different character.”
Gladiator II is set for release in the United Kingdom on November 15th, 2024. The trailer for the long-awaited sequel is out now.