Paul Mescal was chomping at the bit to do a particularly dangerous equine stunt in “Gladiator II,” one which put him and director Sir Ridley Scott at odds.
Mescal, 28, stars in Scott’s sequel to the Best Picture-winning swords-and-sandals epic “Gladiator,” out Friday. He takes on the leading man mantle from the first film’s star, Russell Crowe.
Like Crowe, Mescal performed most of his own stunts in the action flick. However, there was one stunt in particular that the “Normal People” star clashed with Scott over, as his personal trainer Tim Blakeley told The Post.
“He loved the horse riding,” said Blakeley, owner of Media Physiques, a company that specializes in helping actors get their bodies camera-ready.
“And he actually fought with Ridley [Scott] — he had to fight to get a scene in [the movie] with a horse where he had to jump on a horse that was moving.”
According to Blakeley, “Ridley wanted to take it out because he was worried Paul was going to hurt himself.”
Mescal proved undeniably persuasive, though.
“Paul sort of won the argument and managed to get it in,” Blakeley recalled.
Mescal’s fight was in line with his general attitude towards stunts in the film — that is, he wanted to do all of them.
“He would do everything if he could,” Blakeley explained. “He just embraced all the physical aspects of the film.”
It wasn’t just on horseback that Mescal excelled. He slayed in the arena as well.
“Paul was just so good at his fight scenes,” Blakeley said.
And though Mescal had a stunt double, Zach Roberts — whose credits include “House of the Dragon,” “No Time to Die,” and “Black Widow”— Roberts spent most of his time helping the actor rather than stepping in for him.
“Zach was almost sort of his mentor on set,” Blakeley said. “He just picked it up so fast.”
Mescal, who can be seen practicing to grab a sword while on horseback in a behind-the-scenes “Gladiator II” featurette, has also spoken about the battle to do the horse jumping stunt.
He was given the “green light” in prep to do the bit, as he told Stephen Colbert on the “The Late Show” Wednesday night. But when it came time to film, Scott was reluctant to let the star do the stunt because of an incident that took place on his debut picture, 1977’s “The Duellists.” While filming the movie’s last shot, an actor smashed his femur when his horse ran into a tree.
“We can’t do that,” Mescal recalled Scott telling him two weeks before he was set to jump on his horse.
“But I could do this stunt at this point,” he told Colbert, adding that “every day in the two weeks leading up” to filming the scene, he would approach Scott and ask, “Can I possibly do the horse thing?”
The answer was consistently “no.” But Mescal persisted, and on the day before the fateful day, he asked the director one last time.
“He goes silent,” Mescal remembered. “And he goes, If you come off the horse, you owe me two Bentleys.”
As in, two Bentley cars — which start at around $200,000 MSRP.
“And I was like, ‘Sure, if I come off the horse, I don’t know how the f–k I’m paying for that.’ But I didn’t come off the horse and I didn’t have to give him two Bentleys,” the star said.
Mescal recently recreated the stunt in a video shoot with Hollywood Authentic magazine.
“It’s such a brief moment in the film but I think that’s the kind of stuff that I love,” the Irish star he told the mag in a profile. “It doesn’t matter how small a moment is; all of that stuff adds to the general texture of the film. You want to see the actors in the film doing the things that they’re setting out to do.”
He continued, “That was a big day for me, because a lot of work had gone into it. It would have been a very public embarrassment had I cocked it up. Public shame. And probably an injury, and then the film would have to stop.”
But the show went on. No shame. No injuries. And no Bentleys.
“Gladiator II” is in theaters Friday.
