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Paul Mescal vs. Pedro Pascal: A First Look at the Epic ‘Gladiator II’

In Ridley Scott’s sequel, a new generation of warriors clashes in a savage Rome: “It’s pretty gnarly.”

Mescal didn’t expect that his breakthrough role as the sensitive overachiever Connell Waldron in the romantic series Normal People would lead to him playing a ferocious sword-swinging hero in the follow-up to 2001’s best-picture winner. Now, with Gladiator II heading to theaters on November 22, they’re ready to tell the rest of the world where the story picks up in the years after Russell Crowe ’s Maximus gave his life, upending the leadership of the decadent and corrupt society. “Caracalla and Geta are twins and are definitely damaged goods from birth.” Their leadership is a harbinger of the end of centuries of Roman dominance in the ancient world, and Scott says they were a kind of reversal of the legend of two brothers raised by a wolf mother, who were said to be founders of Rome: “This moment is wobbling along on all the brutality, cruelty, and wastefulness, and the two princes, of course, pay no attention.

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