During a special screening on the Paramount lot on Friday, Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Connie Nielsen and Fred Hechinger offered a first look at their new film and talked about their experiences working on Ridley Scott’s sequel.

In the film, Mescal plays an adult Lucius Verus II, a cousin of Emperor Commodus from the original film played by Joaquin Phoenix. Lucius returns to Rome after being forced into slavery to fight for revenge and power not as a ruler but as a gladiator, in an attempt to return the glory of Rome to his people.

“I guess Lucius represented something for me that I had never done before, like someone who is quite at the forefront throughout the two and a half hours,” Mescal said of taking on the lead role. “I hadn’t done that before, and it’s something that’s kind of latent in me, something that’s more filled with something that people haven’t seen yet.”

Washington also plays a prominent role in the film as Macrinus, a wealthy arms dealer and former gladiator who plots to take control of Rome. The actor joked during the question-and-answer session, “He is misunderstood. He’s a nice guy.”

‘He tries to use everyone. He would use his mother, he would use his own children; he already used up his soul, so he had nothing left. He’s in bed with the devil,” Washington continued, explaining that Scott made their job easy by building life-size sets while they shot in Malta. “If you walked around, you were in Rome, and it seemed like 10,000 extras and horses. It was fiction, it was play, it was fun; Just put on the gear, put on the dress and go, that’s how I look at it. I put on this dress, these rings and I go crazy.”

Mescal also elaborated on both his physical and emotional transformation for his character, joking that he “had this naive idea at first where I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll just play a gladiator who looks normal.'” He later went on to say further. realized, “I always saw him as a dog, as someone who would just scrap his way to survival” and who, for most of the film, “doesn’t really care whether he lives or dies.”

The Normal people star told how he was sitting in the production tent on the first day of shooting when Scott walked in with a cigar. “I was shitting myself, and he looks at me and says, ‘Are you nervous?’ And I didn’t know what the right answer was, so I was like, “Eh.” He says, “Your nerves aren’t doing any damn good to me.” Marching out, cameras rolling,” Mescal recalled to laughter from the crowd.

Concluding the conversation, Mescal noted that the sequel, which arrives 24 years after the original, “carries the legacy of the first film with intense pride and honor, but I think it’s going in a direction that will take that honor and respect through the roof.” .”

“I think it was made by the only man who could ever touch it, namely Ridley Scott, and personally, as his friend and his long-time admirer, I think it is one of his finest pieces of work that I have seen in recent times ,” the actor added. “I am so very proud of his work, my work, and everyone who is here and everyone who is not here. I don’t think anyone can take that away from us.”

Gladiator II hits theaters on November 22.