The Irish actor Paul Mescal, 28, has been cast as Lucius in the sequel to Ridley Scott’s original Gladiator movie, which is scheduled to be released in November.
Mescal shot to fame in 2020 as the nerdy Connell Waldron in Normal People but has been working on the kind of physique Russel Crowe boasted as the original Gladiator.
Mescal worked with trainer Tim Blakeley every day, but likes to drink and smoke so he drew a line at those vices. That aside, he said, ‘It just meant lifting heavy things for a long time, as well as eating lots of chicken.”
How Paul Mescal Prepared For Gladiator II
Mescal said he doesn’t have a lot of patience but worked with his trainer for 45 minutes a day, six days a week.
With a latent ambition to do something more physical and muscular, Mescal wanted to surprise the audience. He knew he had this type of role within him but wanted to go against the grain when it came to his physique training.
Because superheroes don’t exist, but gladiators did, Mescal focused on training for prime athletes and decided to go back to Gaelic football training, something he is used to. He said he had a great trainer and people telling him what and when to eat, but it still got tiresome at certain moments.
Temporarily giving up running
Because the team’s focus was on building muscle, Mescal was told to give up running in the months leading up to filming. He has been seen jogging around London and is known to be an active individual.
He is also a keen boxer and loves going on walks and confirmed that as filming got closer, he could run again. Fellow star Pedro Pascal said Mescal’s strength contributed to their fight sequences which were challenging to act and film.
Fight choreography
Mescal thinks his love of Gaelic football helped him land the lead role in Gladiator II. He wasn’t asked to do a camera test but did have to bulk up ahead of filming.
The actor said he didn’t want to transform into a ‘Hollywood hunk’ and was concerned that he may just end up looking less like a warrior and more like an underwear model.
Rather than sculpting Mescal into a sex symbol, his training was built around fight choreography to build a gladiator type of physique.
Personal training sessions and ‘eating everything he fancied’
A team of nutritionists told Mescal what and when to eat. He needed to make the audience believe he is someone who would survive intense violence throughout the film, so his workout included lots of squats and heavy lifts. He was also encouraged to eat everything he wanted, including burgers and chips.
Weight lifting and resistance training
TikTok videos show Mescal’s Gladiator workout where he does shoulder raises with dumbbells for 23 seconds. This type of weight training involves overloading the muscle progressively to force it to adapt, grow and get stronger.
This could be done by adding extra repetitions each week, or by changing the pace to add more time under tension.
An expert speculated that Mescal included push and pull sessions into his workouts. This means pushing the weight away from the body- for example a chest press, then pulling the weight to the body, for example a lateral pulldown.
Simon Turner is a former Obstacle Workout features writer and writes regularly on sports, fitness and adventure for Probody.
