Gladiator Star Russell Crowe Confesses His Doubts Over His Iconic Role

Russell Crowe shared his honest memories of how he felt doubtful about his role in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. 

The film, which earned five Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Crowe’s portrayal of the Roman general turned gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius, is regarded as one of Crowe’s finest movies and sparked Hollywood’s renewed interest in historical epics. However, the film’s original production faced many problems due to an incomplete script that needed several changes even while filming was in progress.

Crowe has opened up about the backstage turmoil, talking to Vanity Fair about his own doubts about the film’s notorious problems. 

Calling the original script garbage, the Gladiator star confessed he sometimes thought his best choice was to “fly away” and quit the production completely. However, his discussions with Scott persuaded him to stay loyal to the role. Read his comments below –

“At the core of what we were doing was a great concept, but the script was rubbish, absolute rubbish. It had all these sort of strange sequences. One of them was about chariots and how famous gladiators — and this is all true — used certain types of chariots and how famous gladiators had endorsement deals for olive oil and things like that, and it’s all true, but it’s just not going to ring right to a modern audience, they’re going to, “What the f—k is all this?”

Chuckles

The energy around what we were doing was very fractured. I did think a couple times maybe my best option was just to get on a plane and get out of there. It was my continued conversations with Ridley that gave me faith, he said to me at one point in time, “Mate, we’re not committing anything to camera you don’t believe in 100 percent.” So, when we actually started that film, we had 21 pages of script that we agreed on. A script is usually between 103-110 pages or something like that, so we had a long way to go, and we basically used up those pages in the first section of the movie. [Laughs] So, by the time we got to our second location, which was Morocco, we were sort of catching up.”

More than two decades after the first film, Gladiator 2 is now officially in production. Scott is back as the director, and the sequel will focus on Paul Mescal’s Lucius Verus, the grown-up son of the Roman empress Lucilla. 

Denzel Washington, who has won two Academy Awards, has also been confirmed in a secret role, while Barry Keoghan from The Batman is said to be playing Roman Emperor Geta.

Gladiator 2 is set to release in November 2024, but the sequel has been a long time in the making, with original plans going back to 2001. Original screenwriter David Franzoni was initially in discussions to come back, but he was soon replaced, and the project would eventually change hands several times. 

Even singer Nick Cave was hired to try his skills at a draft that would have brought Crowe’s Maximus back as an immortal fighter who would battle through multiple historical periods up to the present day.

After many delays, Scott finally hired his Napoleon and All the Money in the World screenwriter, David Scarpa, to write the final version of Gladiator 2 with what seems to be a much more realistic approach than the imaginative versions which would have revived Crowe’s character from the dead. 

While it is still uncertain whether the new film will match the success of its predecessor or not, filming the new sequel will hopefully go a lot more smoothly, and it will dodge the script problems faced by the first Gladiator.

About Gladiator

Gladiator is a 2000 epic historical drama film directed by Ridley Scott and written by David Franzoni, John Logan, and William Nicholson. The film was co-produced and released by DreamWorks Pictures and Universal Pictures.

It stars Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Ralf Möller, Oliver Reed (in his final role), Djimon Hounsou, Derek Jacobi, John Shrapnel, Richard Harris, and Tommy Flanagan.

Crowe portrays Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius, who is betrayed when Commodus, the ambitious son of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, murders his father and seizes the throne. Reduced to slavery, Maximus becomes a gladiator and rises through the ranks of the arena to avenge the murders of his family and his emperor.