While Paramount Pictures' blockbuster sequel Gladiator II has a stacked cast full of fresh faces, including Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington, one of the original queens from Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning 2000 film is back and ready to reclaim her throne: Connie Nielsen.
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Picking up almost two decades after the events of the first Gladiator, Gladiator II sees Nielsen's Lucilla return in all of her glory, this time married to Pedro Pascal's General Acacius. While the two conspire to overthrow the tyrannical twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), Lucilla is reunited with her long-lost son Lucius (Paul Mescal) in the most unexpected of ways (via the Colosseum), and they must now navigate trying to bring order and peace back to the Roman Empire.
Out spoke with Nielsen, who opened up about what it was like reprising such an iconic, and regal, role and working with Mescal as his beloved mother figure.
"It was both, of course, an incredible opportunity that I was just really excited about, and then at the same time I was really scared," Nielsen explained. "Did they have a good enough script? I hadn't read it yet, and was it going to really be able to honor the expectations, because they are huge. The expectations were bound to be enormous. We could not screw that up. So that was also daunting. So I think all of us felt like, 'Oh my God, we have to put our hearts and souls into this to make sure that nothing here is lazy. Nothing here is relying on the good will of the first one and everything here is about creating the next chapter.'"
(L-R) Pedro Pascal and Connie Nielsen in 'Gladiator II.'Paramount Pictures
On working with Mescal, Nielsen said:
"One of the things that we both were instinctively doing prior to shooting that first scene where we meet each other again, I think we both came in there not wanting to take the air out of the balloon, not wanting to at all prep the scene. We wanted to go in there and let loose the fireworks. And Ridley has this uncanny understanding of what it takes to make sure we didn't over-rehearse anything, that everything was just ready to go combustion as soon as we went in there. And that is exactly what happened. And it was just such a rich scene as the way it was written. And I just knew that with Paul, it would be an incredible scene to actually live out."
Watch Out's full interview with Connie Nielsen in the video above. Gladiator II is now playing in theaters.
