Both men have made their trade in brutality, but while Crowe’s warrior is a master of control, Pascal says his character is someone who gets swept up in circumstances. “I think a lot happens before you can stop and question what you’ve done. And then, of course, there’s nothing to change,” he says. “He’s a very, very good general, which can mean a very good killer.” For Lucius, Acacius is the symbol of everything he hates. “The movie starts with the Roman fleet raiding party, coming in from the sea and decimating Numidia,” Scott says. “It’s pretty scary.”
Lucius, once the grandson of the emperor of Rome, finds himself a prisoner of the empire. “When you’re a prisoner of war in Rome, if you’re wounded, you’re killed. If you’re healthy, you’re sent to some kind of service, like slavery, or you’re going to go to the arena to die,” the director explains. This leads to a twist that the filmmaker is willing to reveal today: “The problem is that when he arrives in Rome as a prisoner and he takes his first lap in the arena, he sees his mother – to his great surprise. He doesn’t know if she’s alive or not. How would he know? There’s no telephone. There’s no press. And his mother is in the royal box, looking pretty healthy after 20 years. And she’s with the general he met face to face on the Numidian Wall.”
Lucilla doesn’t recognize the wounded creature in the Colosseum as her son and has no idea of the bloody history between her and the man she loves. “This is a woman who has experienced a tremendous loss and in the midst of it all, a gift in Pedro Pascal,” Nielsen says. “What a gift this guy is. Even to act and work with, I love him, and he’s perfect for this role. He’s one of those rare actors who really has heart and soul and at the same time this incredible gift of transformation.”
