By Following Ridley Scott’s assertion that the upcoming “Gladiator” sequel is one of his best films to date, several of the actors involved in the film have discussed their characters and what drew them to the project.
Speaking with Empire, actor Denzel Washington said reuniting with Scott again was the main appeal to him to take on the role of freed gladiator turned wealthy arms dealer Macrinus.
Washington describes his role as a man who “wants to be Emperor and he’s willing to do anything to get there”. The part and the helmer convinced him to join the project:
“There are very few films left for me to make that I’m interested in, and I have to be inspired by the filmmaker, and I was tremendously inspired by Ridley. We had a great go-round the first go-round [on American Gangster], and here we are. He’s engaged. He’s excited about life and his next film. He’s an inspiration. We should all want to feel like that at 86.”
“Stranger Things” breakout Joseph Quinn and rising young actor Fred Hechinger play twin Emperor’s Caracalla and Geta respectively – the pair serving as the cruel and egotistical villains of the piece.
Asked about their inspiration for their roles, Quinn says the main goal wasn’t to do a bad impersonation of Joaquin Phoenix’s memorably weasley Emperor Commodus from the first film:
“For obvious reasons, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance was something that was in our minds. It was something we had a reverence for, but we didn’t want to…. soil with some kind of poor rendition.”
Quinn says Philip Seymour Hoffman’s thuggish turn in “Mission: Impossible III” and Gary Oldman in “The Fifth Element” were inspirations for them – especially the later as he “has this relish for being horrible”.
Scott described the villains as “Probably the equivalent of Romulus and Remus, the two lunatics who formed Rome but were bred from the milk of a wolf? [They] came up a different way but were probably brain-damaged.”
However the pair are kind of secondary villains to Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius – the man who is in the direct crosshairs of our hero – Paul Mescal’s Lucius. Both are set for a big one-on-one fight scene with Mescal suggesting he’d win if it were done for real:
“I think I’d win in a fight between me and Pedro, but he’s deceptive. Pedro is one of the funniest men that I know, but he could f— s— up. Like, absolutely categorically. There’s a beast in there for sure.”
For more “Gladiator 2” quotes, head over to Empire.
The post “Gladiator 2” Cast Talk The Project’s Draw appeared first on Dark Horizons.
