Inside ripped Gladiators star Paul Mescal's incredible body transformation as he sheds 10kg

Irish actor Paul Mescal has stepped into some very big shoes (or maybe it should be sandals?) by taking on the lead role of Lucius in Sir Ridley Scott’s new Gladiator II film. The historical epic serves as a sequel to the Oscar-winning version starring Russell Crowe – who played Maximus Decimus Meridius, Lucius’ father – and has well and truly catapulted Paul to the upper echelons of Hollywood royalty.

But Paul, 28, who met King Charles on the red carpet at the London premiere of the movie, has had no time to reflect on his achievements, or the resulting fanfare. Speaking to OK! and other media at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, County Kildare’s golden boy tells us he’s just pleased to be putting “one foot in front of the other”.

“Ridley doesn’t wait around,” he says. “I think he was pretty conscious of the fact that he wanted to start with a bang, just to let us know what we were stepping into. For the first day, we shot the opening sequence in Morocco – a battle sequence. The key cast were kept in little holding tents and I was walking around with my sword, furiously smoking – just waiting to be summoned to the set.

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“Then we hear over the radio that Ridley Scott’s coming to say hello and he comes in smoking a cigar. He looks at us and goes, ‘Are you nervous?’ I wasn’t really sure what the appropriate response was, so I think I just made a noise. He then whacked me on my back and said, “Your nerves are no f**king good to me!” And then he proceeds to turn over the cameras. As we walked on to the set, that’s when I saw the scale for the first time. That was the first day.”

By that point, though, Paul had already climbed a metaphorical mountain, having spent months gaining around 20lbs of muscle, only to then have to keep it on for much longer than anticipated because of the scheduling impact of the Sag-Aftra actors’ strike.
Not only that, the delaying of the end of filming then left him with just a few weeks to drop the weight again because he was contracted to film History Of Sound immediately afterwards.

“I had to lose 10 kilos, so the last two weeks of the Gladiator shoot, instead of lifting weights, my poor trainer saw the worst of me – because you’re on a treadmill for an hour and a half and you’ve no energy,” he says. “I was not in the best form, let’s say, for the last two weeks of the Gladiator shoot. To give you an honest answer, that was the hardest part of it.”

Paul’s role as the vengeful Lucius, the now grown up son of Roman general Maximus, meant the muscles were very much needed. While his father is long dead and buried, Lucius must battle for his freedom after he’s ripped away from his wife and daughter and taken prisoner before being sold into slavery by general Marcus Acacius (played by Narcos star Pedro Pascal).

One of the other stars requiring no introduction is Denzel Washington, who plays Macrinus, a former slave turned gladiator mentor who plans to control Rome. For Paul, working alongside the “extraordinary talent” of two-times Oscar-winner Denzel was a serious lesson in how acting should be done.

“The thing that I found so inspiring and relaxing was that he’s not reinventing the wheel,” he says. “He’s got this extraordinary talent, but it’s not like he’s having a special breakfast in the morning or injecting himself with acting magic or anything. He’s just going to work on a very, very practical level and informing the role that he’s playing with all of the experience that he’s had before.

“My acting coach in drama school always said, ‘Regardless of your talent, experience trumps all.’”

We wonder if playing the lead alongside such an incredible cast daunted Paul, who first rose to fame as Connell Waldron alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones in 2020, in the BBC series Normal People ? Not really, he tells us, but acknowledges that being captain of his school Gaelic football team pales in comparison to leading the cast on a Ridley Scott set.

“Leading a film in terms of being in that position of leadership, it has nothing to do with talent, it has everything to do with attitude,” he explains. “You have to be the person who’s there first in the morning. If you feel like [camera] set-ups are taking longer, don’t wait in your trailer, instead, get in front of the camera because the minute an actor’s in front of a camera and waiting, everything goes way faster.

“You’ve just got to take up the space that you want to occupy – and sometimes there’s a bit of faking it until you make it. But that part of it is, thankfully – whatever I’ve learned through Gaelic football and sport.”

Paul was only four years old when the first Gladiator came out. Regardless, it clearly holds some real significance for him. He grew up watching it with his schoolteacher dad, Paul, and when it came to the film’s London premiere last month, his dad’s presence was just as important to him as the King’s.

Even so, Paul admits that he’s a sucker for craving “the next thing”, but hopes that one day he’ll be able to see his achievements through the same lens as those around him.

“I don’t know where I learned this, but it’s always been that I can enjoy something for not a huge length of time,” he confesses. “In 10 years’ time, I’ll look back on these last three years in terms of what’s going on in my personal life and what’s going on in my professional life and I’ll think, ‘You’re doing well to just put one foot in front of the other.’

“I don’t have a proper answer in terms of what it actually means to me – other than the fact that I can see from the people around me that it’s been a really special time.”