Paul Mescal Recalls Director Ridley Scott Helping Him Get Over ‘Nerves’ on the First Day on Set of Gladiator II

Paul Mescal couldn’t quite shake the nerves going into Gladiator II.

During a Q&A following a special screening of the movie in Los Angeles on Friday, Oct. 18, the 28-year-old Irish actor revealed that he felt a bit anxious on the first day of shooting alongside Pedro Pascal — but director Ridley Scott made sure to get him back on track.

“The first day on set was me and Pedro, and we were consciously kept in the tents, kind of outside of the city walls,” Mescal recalled. “We were sitting in the tents and I was smoking a cigarette, and we were kind of marching around the place and Ridley comes in with a cigar.”

“I was absolutely sh—— myself. And he looks at me and he goes, ‘You nervous?’ And I… didn’t know what the appropriate answer was. So I was like, ‘Ah,’ ” he continued, before mimicking Scott, 86, patting him on the back. “He’s like, ‘Bang, your nerves are no f—— good to me.’ So [he] marches us out.”

Mescal was joined at the event by costars Denzel Washington, Connie Nielsen and Fred Hechinger, where they discussed making the film, which is a sequel to Scott’s 2000 Oscar-winning epic starring Russell Crowe as Lucius Verus. Mescal portrays the vengeful son of Crowe’s character Maximus, who is also an arena fighter in the movie.

While the All of Us Strangers star may have had some nerves on set, Scott previously shared in an interview with Deadline that he knew there was something about Mescal that captured him after watching him in 2020’s Normal People, and he invited him for a personal meeting to discuss the role shortly after.

“I’m always looking for someone, something new and fresh. I mean, fresh is terribly important,” Scott told the outlet. “So they’re not carrying … baggage is a terrible word for what they’ve done before, because it’s great stuff, but you will remember he just did this character already.”

As for Mescal, he told The Hollywood Reporter he was “proud” to land the role shortly after the news broke of his casting in 2023, though he admitted at the time that it was “an intimidating feat.”

“It’s something I’m nervous about but something I feel like I can do,” he added at the time.

Gladiator II, written by David Scarpa (of Napoleon, the 2023 historical epic also directed by Scott), costars Pascal, Joseph Quinn and May Calamawy. Reprising their Gladiator roles are Nielsen as Lucilla, mother to Mescal’s character, and Derek Jacobi as Roman Senator Gracchus. 

Paramount Pictures first unveiled footage of Gladiator II at CinemaCon in April. Of choosing to make a sequel, Scott told Deadline in November 2023 that while the original Gladiator was “completely satisfactory, creatively complete… these cycles keep going on and on and on, they repeat globally for the last 20 years. It started to spell itself out as an obvious thing to do, and that’s how it evolved.”

Gladiator II is in theaters Nov. 22.