In crafting his Emperor character in the upcoming legacy sequel “Gladiator II,” Joseph Quinn knew he had big shoes to fill. In the first film, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as the power-hungry Emperor Commodus earned him an Academy Award nomination and helped propel the actor’s stardom. While Quinn and his co-star Fred Hechinger were careful to keep Phoenix’s performance in mind as they crafted their own, in a recent interview with Empire, he shared how he also found inspiration elsewhere.
“It was something we had a reverence for, but we didn’t want to…. soil with some kind of poor rendition,” Quinn said of Phoenix’s take on Commodus.
Instead, he and Hechinger looked to other villainous performances that were sometimes better than the heroes they’re facing off against. One that stood out to the two was Philip Seymour Hoffman’s ruthless Davian in “Mission: Impossible III,” who’s dastardly acts include putting an explosive charge in Ethan Hunt’s head. Another tracks a little further back, but felt fitting for Quinn.
“Gary Oldman in ‘The Fifth Element!’” he said to Empire. “He has this relish for being horrible.”
In “Gladiator II,” Quinn and Hechinger play real-life brothers, Gata and Caracalla, who ruled as Emperors together, but eventually found themselves at odds. In thinking on a comparison, director Ridley Scott called upon a reference that ties into another recent entry in one of his franchises.
“They are probably the equivalent of Romulus and Remus,” Scott said. “You know, the two lunatics who formed Rome but were bred from the milk of a wolf? [Caracalla and Geta] came up a different way but were probably brain-damaged.”
In an interview with Games Radar in July, Hechinger also shared another non-actor related influence he discussed with Scott early on in the process.
“We talked a lot about Sid Vicious,” said Hechinger, referencing the late Sex Pistols frontman. “We talked a lot of influences that you might not expect in a world like that, but I found to be very inspiring, and liberating, and wild.”
The lead of “Gladiator II,” Paul Mescal, also spoke with Empire in a separate interview, sharing that it was the sheer heft of this epic sequel that drew him to the project and helped focus how he should handle his performance.
“I had always had a kind of latent ambition to do something that was more muscular and physical,” Mescal said. “From a selfish side of things, I wanted to surprise an audience, because I knew that I have this kind of role within me. When this came up, I was like, ‘This is something that I don’t think anybody who’s seen the work that I’ve done previously will be expecting,’ and it’s Ridley Scott.”
“Gladiator II” will be released by Paramount Pictures, in theaters on November 22.
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