A year before his debut as Hogwarts’ headmaster, Richard Harris played the role of philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius in Ridley Scott’s sword-and-sandal epic Gladiator. Nearly 25 years later, Scott has made a sequel featuring Marcus Aurelius’ grandson, Lucius, portrayed by Paul Mescal. Mescal won the role partly due to the English director’s belief that he resembles the late Irish acting legend.
Mescal, who is also Irish, was nominated for an Academy Award last year for his performance in Aftersun, and previously, he had earned an Emmy nomination for the 2020 miniseries Normal People. This was where Ridley Scott first noticed the young actor. “It’s my job to spot talent. I work with a great casting director, but when I’m prepping a project, I often already have an idea. I was watching TV series after TV series, and Normal People came up. I thought, ‘This kid [Mescal] is interesting,’ and then, ‘Damn, he looks like Richard Harris!’ That’s when it all clicked: ‘He’s Lucius.’ So I asked him if he’d like to be in my movie,” the 87-year-old director shared with The Hollywood Reporter.
Gladiator II, set to hit theaters this November, picks up the story two decades after the original. Connie Nielsen will reprise her role as Lucilla, daughter of Marcus Aurelius and mother of Lucius. In the first film, Lucius was portrayed as a child by Spencer Treat Clark, who has no hard feelings about not being cast as the grown-up Lucius. In the THR interview, Scott was also asked about the similarities and differences he sees between the original Gladiator, Russell Crowe, and Mescal’s portrayal of Lucius. “It’s a different approach. Both have a certain theatricality. Paul is a stage actor, that’s his territory. He asked me if I like theater. I told him, ‘No, I usually fall asleep.’ He just laughed,” Scott recounted.
For a bit of context, here’s Richard Harris in Red Desert from 1964, at age 34—six years older than Paul Mescal is now:
