Friday, during a special screening on the Paramount lot, Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Connie Nielsen and Fred Hechinger offered a first look at their new film and talked about their experiences working on Ridley Scott's sequel.
The film sees Mescal play an adult Lucius Verus II, grandson of Emperor Commodus from the original film played by Joaquin Phoenix. Lucius returns to Rome after being forced into slavery to fight not as a ruler but as a gladiator in search of revenge and power, trying to restore the glory of Rome to its people.
“I guess Lucius represented something for me that I hadn't done before, as someone who's quite at the forefront during the two and a half hours,” Mescal said of the lead role. “I've never had a chance to do that before, and it's something that's been kind of latent within me, something that's fuller than something people have never seen.”
Washington also has an important role in the film as Macrinus, a wealthy arms dealer and former gladiator who plots to control Rome. The actor joked during the Q&A session: “It's been misunderstood. He's a good guy.”
“He's trying to use everyone. He would use his mother, he would use his own children; he's already used up his soul, so he has none left. He's in bed with the devil,” Washington continued, explaining that Scott made their job easy by building life-size sets while filming in Malta. “When you walked around, you were in Rome and it looked like 10,000 extras and horses. It was fiction, it was a game, it was fun; just put on your gear, put on your suit and go, that's how I look at it. I put on this dress, these rings and I'm going crazy.
Mescal also spoke about both his character's physical and emotional transformation, joking that he had “this naive idea at the beginning where I thought, 'Maybe I'll just play a gladiator who will look normal.'” Afterward. he realized, “I always saw him as a dog, as someone who would just like to eat his way to survival” who, for most of the film, “doesn't really care whether he lives or dies.”
THE Normal people The star told the story of how on the first day of filming he was sitting in the production tent when Scott walked in with a cigar. “I was just shitting myself, and he looks at me and says, 'Are you nervous?' And I didn't know what the appropriate response was, so I was like, “Huh.” And he's like, 'Your nerves aren't fucking good for me.' He comes out, the cameras roll,” Mescal recalled to laughter from the audience.
To conclude the conversation, Mescal noted that the sequel, which arrives 24 years after the original, “wears the legacy of the first film with intense pride and honor, but I think it takes it in a direction that drives that honor and respect through the film. roof.”
“I think it was made by the only man who could ever touch it, Ridley Scott, and personally, as his longtime friend and admirer, I think it's some of the finest work of his that I've seen in a long time,” he added the actor. “I am absolutely proud of his work and my work and everyone sitting here and everyone who isn't sitting here. I don't think anyone can take that away from us.”
Gladiator II will be released in theaters on November 22nd.