Ridley Scott interview | Gladiator II, Alien 3, tennis, art and baboons

Director Ridley Scott talks to us about Gladiator II, his favourite tennis documentary, baboons and an awful lot more.

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Even a brief conversation with director Ridley Scott demonstrates how he’s continued to make feature films for almost 50 years. Decades on from his debut, 1977’s The Duellists, Scott remains as restlessly creative as ever – his latest film, sword-and-sandal sequel Gladiator II, arrives almost exactly a year after Napoleon. Both are historical epics requiring armies of extras and equally sizeable film crews; and yet, unfazed by their scale, Scott says he has at least three other movie projects mapped out and ready to go over the next three years.

Our conversation with Ridley Scott took place in September, and we’ve since learned that his plans have changed. When we spoke to him, he was working on a Bee Gees biopic; that project has now been delayed, and he’s reportedly making a sci-fi drama called The Dog Stars – starring Gladiator II’s Paul Mescal – instead. 

Such is the speed of progress from a filmmaker whose mind nimbly races from art to baboons to tennis documentaries to the moral corruption of the Roman Empire. As Gladiator II emerges in cinemas, here’s what Ridley Scott had to say about these subjects and more besides.

[Gladiator II] has been in the works, off and on, for 20 years. Has it evolved much over time?

When you do it, I’m already on other things, and well past it. So what comes in more is, why should we do a sequel? Because I watched two previous genres of mine bypass me because I wasn’t paying attention; one was Alien – I resurrected Alien because it died with Prometheus and then Covenant. And then with Blade Runner, I was just too busy. 

This one, I thought, it seems to have grabbed the imagination – not just on a sequel level, but it seems to have grabbed the emotional commitment and interest of the people who watched it, the first one. There’s more to it than action and violence if you know what I mean. 

I think what it was, it was a late idea in the first one, I wanted to tinker with mortality and immortality. The interesting thing that wasn’t in the script was, I tinkered with the idea that, if he dies in the arena, he would know he was going to pass… I wanted to see him reach for the door and join his wife and child. That was an idea that was thought to be a bit too much, but ironically it proved to be, really, the bloodline of the film.

What’s interesting is that this is a revenge story, like the first one, but it’s much less clear-cut. 

It’s more complex for sure, yeah.

We end up quite liking Pedro Pascal’s character. Even Macrinus, Denzel Washington’s character, you can understand his motivations.

Yeah, he’s not entirely… Denzel I see as an arms dealer. Probably a prisoner of war. Had been a fighter, had to go into the arena, earned his way out, and ended up working for somebody. Maybe he was good at wine, good at oil, good at metal – and suddenly he’s a dealer, supplying food and arms to the troops in the provinces. So he’s rich, and from that, he’s taking on the mantle of a noble, and from a noble, apart from jolly nice cars – golden chariots – he has a stable of gladiators, because he does love a punch-up. So along the route of earning what he came, he became perverted, thinking, ‘I too can be a leader.’

It’s kind of a good thing to reach for, and I think we pulled it off. And these eventual leaders of Rome, half of them were bandits; half of them were corrupt. Brutal. Crazy. So why not an arms dealer who has more money than all of them?

How much of this film did you draw? You’re famous for your Ridleygrams…

Everything. The Alien boards, which was my first one, lay in a folder in my office. One day somebody came in who was an archivist, and they said, “What are you doing? You can’t leave this here! It’s worth [a fortune].” 

So he went through everything, because I board every movie, and so they’re now insured for quite a few million dollars, and they’re in a vault. So now every time I draw, they’re very valuable comic strips. They’re not a few pages, they’re thick [indicates something like a telephone directory]. What they do is, they do closeups, wide shots – I even draw locations I haven’t found yet. So frequently, people will look at them and say, ‘Oh, we’ll look for that [location].’

So the board can lead the way, and once I’ve done the board, I can literally shoot the film on Monday because I’ve already filmed it in my head. 

That was going to be one of my questions: is that how you make such complex films so quickly? Because you’ve mapped it out already.

Totally. Because I discovered a while ago that actors don’t want 49 takes. [Laughs] If you’re doing 49 takes there’s something seriously wrong, okay? They love two takes because they’ve come in there, they’ve been cast, they’ve been talked to by me, they’ve been dressed, they’re in the mode, and they turn up prepared. So I say, ‘No rehearsal. Action.’

They go, ‘Wow’.

Normally, it’s two or three takes and we’re done. And I always use 11 cameras. Four to 11 cameras. So you schedule for the day, but you’re done by 11 o’clock. And the actors say, ‘Goddamn, we did 40 set-ups this morning’. And they’re thrilled to bits with themselves. 

I read that before you made the original Gladiator, you were inspired by the painting Police Verso by Gerome. Was there a certain piece of art or images that helped inspire this one?

Always. Because the Roman Empire, in the late 19th and early 20th century, was very well covered by Romantic [artists]. [Lawrence] Alma-Tadema was very fashionable, because he would paint aristocrats in full Roman gear in a Roman room, to hang in their own drawing rooms. And so it became fashionable to be painted in a Roman bath or something like that. The quality of their paintings are like great photographs, so I’d always look at those.

There’s a great painting that’s called The Moor. The guy like this [arms folded] and he had a great pointy beard. Denzel didn’t go for the beard. I thought, ‘There’s Denzel’, and that’s how I got him involved. I thought he might say no, but he said ‘Yeah!’

-Do you meet many other directors who are artists like you these days?

No. I’m unusual in that in my time, there never was a film school. My evolution is very good tuition at very good art schools. I did seven years at art school. GCE level was a disaster – I got one GCE and that was art. I was told by the art master – I was at a secondary modern school – he said, ‘Go to art school. That’s what you do.’ So I went to art school at his instruction. From that it evolved.

I discovered I had a good eye, did a lot of good stills. I was going to be a fashion photographer. But from that I discovered commercial television, and I caught the wave of this new thing called commercial TV, and in a heartbeat I was directing commercials. Because of my visual nature, what I’m good at, I was fundamentally top of the line. I changed the whole look of television advertising. 

There were really three important [directors] at that time; Alan Parker, Adrian Lyne and Hugh Hudson. Then later would be my brother [Tony] who was six years younger than me. So in a funny kind of way, commercials without question influenced the way films looked. The way they were cut and written. 

The commercials I was making at that time, it was a kind of artform. I did a commercial for Steve Jobs.

Yes, the 1984 one. 

Yep. That clicked off in two weeks. He was very pro filmmaking after that, because he was a bit suspicious of advertising. A lot of ads back then, honestly, looked way better than any of the programmes, and I think we influenced the way things looked and were lit.

Do you think filmmakers perhaps go into major filmmaking too young? You had that grounding; you built up to the huge films that you made later.

Really, I was ready at 26 to do it, and they just didn’t want to know because all I’d done were 30-second commercials. My reel from 30 years ago, frankly, is as good as anything today. I think they were just short-changing me because they didn’t know what I could do, which is fine. I was unusual because I gradually worked my way up to buying a book, paying the writer, becoming my own completion bond, and funding my first film and never getting paid.

The Duellists then won a prize at Cannes. Boom – I was off and running. But I was 40. But with no regrets, because when I entered the film business, I wasn’t a new kid, I was kind of the leader of the pack.

And you didn’t have anything to prove by then. 

Exactly. Experience, experience, experience. The only thing a young person hasn’t got is experience, so, does experience count? You can bet your bloody bottom dollar it does. So you do get a lot of chaos when people are given it too soon, and that’s the naivety of an executive, right? But sometimes it works. There are always a few that can cope. So I watch what everyone does all the time, because I feel a bit like an athlete – I have to keep up with the youngsters. I look at everything and I’m constantly refreshing. Never repeat yourself.

I read an anecdote by David Fincher. He was on the set of Alien 3, which of course was his first film, and he was very young. And you came on set smoking a cigar, and you asked him how things are going.  He said, ‘Not good, Ridley, not good’.

He was sitting on a tin can! [Laughs] I said, ‘How are you doing, dude?’ He said, ‘I’m in Alien hell.’ 

He’d been doing it for ten months by then. There were too many cooks in the kitchen. David, at that moment, hadn’t got that experience. I had so much experience with so many commercials, and by then I had offices in London, Paris and New York. I’m 

not a learner. So when they thought I was a new boy on the block going to Hollywood – nah. I knew more than most of them. But David got it early, so he hadn’t benefited from the experience I had. 

But he did alright – he’s doing fine.

Oh yeah, he came out on top in the end. 

But they had all the visual effects. We had no visual effects [on Alien]. Not any. My Alien’s a guy in a rubber suit. [Fincher’s] got six running around the walls. So in a way, that’s also a problem – you’ve got too much to play with. You have to narrow your palette down.

So in terms of complexity, where does Gladiator II rank among the films you’ve made so far?

It’s certainly going to be the biggest. I smell it, right? Because I’m always in deep respect for somebody who’s paying me to fulfil a dream on paper. Trust me. That’s why we ended up $10m under budget. Because we moved so fast and I’m respectful of my investor partner, the studio. That’s no question. We’re lucky that there’s still money out there for us to do this. So it comes out of that respect. And so over my films – and I’ve done a lot of TV productions as well – there’s on regrets over anything. They’re all my favourite children.

What’s it like when something outside of your control happens, though? Like the Hollywood strikes last year.

Listen, I had to fire Kevin Spacey [on All The Money In The World]. I reshot him in nine days. And Kevin… it’s about knowing what you’re doing and speed and decision. So four months down, I just sat and prepared the next fuckin’ movie. I sat and drew boards for Gladiator [III]. So I’ve got the next three years laid out with three movies – they’re already written. I tend not to have 40 things in development, which you could easily have; I narrow it right down to things I really want to make, and therefore will get made.

The arena sequences in this are stunning. It feels like you’ve used everything at your disposal to top what you did in the first film. 

Well, I always wanted to have the rhino in the first film but we couldn’t afford it.

I read that, yes.

So we did the rhino. But I went beyond that. I saw in a car park in South Africa, these tourists wandering around to get a coffee. And over the wall came this troop of baboons. It was unbelievable, because baboons are carnivores. A baboon can be small, but can you hang by a beam for two hours by your foot? No. Will they rip your arm off? Yes. Will they take a bite out of your face? Yes. So I thought, ‘It’s got to be the baboons.’

So the baboon was the first crazy challenge. The actors have to have somebody to fight with, because it’s a choreography of violence – with animals. If you try to wrestle with a Jack Russell that’s lost it, that’s in the red zone, forget it. You’ll get bitten 50 times before you even get to the kitchen door. A wild animal is something else. 

So what I did was, we cast all the smallest stunt men I could find, who are muscular and strong. We gave them short crutches to walk around on, so suddenly you have the movement of a baboon. They’re in black tights, painted faces. 

We shot the whole sequence with stuntmen in black tights. So then you have the dust, the movement. Then our digital supervisor put in the [basic CG model] of each baboon, then if you like that movement, then you put in skin, then you put in hair.

And I’d seen in the car park, there was one baboon that had alopecia – no hair. So that was how he was born. 

I was going to ask about that, because [the hairless baboon] is a frightening character. 

Baboons can lose their hair. And when they lose their hair – who’s the kung fu guy who had no fat at all?

Oh, you mean Bruce Lee?

[Nods] It’s the baboon version of Bruce Lee!

Talking of the gladiatorial element, these films are about the power of entertainment. How entertainment can be used to pacify and also inflame people. Is that also true of films?

I’d say it’s true of soccer. And right now tennis is crazy. Basketball is crazy. But soccer is insane. It’s as you call it the beautiful game, right? But the shift is almost uncomfortable; if you won, you won. I always loved [tennis players Roger] Federer, [Rafael] Nadal. And others. But somehow the elegance to victory is beautiful and not uncomfortable. It’s that [makes an aggressive movement]. That shit [in football] – I can’t stand that. I mean, you won. Good. Just acknowledge it. In a way, they’re princes of that sport. There’s a beautiful documentary right now about [Federer – Twelve Final Days]. have you seen it?

I haven’t, no.

He says, “I’m never gonna play first-class tennis. I’m gonna retire.” It’s really a beautiful story. When he’s in the changing room at the end, he starts to weep. Then Nadal does. Then [Novak] Djokovic does. All these gods of tennis are actually weeping. It’s almost comical, it’s so touching. It’s great. They’ve lost their god, right? I think that’s beautiful.

There’s two interesting political arguments in Gladiator II. One is that a democratic republic is possible; the other seems to be that power will always corrupt. I wondered which side you came down on.

You’re talking about a thousand years of corruption. They did this – this isn’t movie time. This is fuckin’ real. You’d have Christians devoured by lions. So when you think about that, you can’t parallel what happened in the Second World War and what Putin’s doing right now… it’s all terrible. There’s no layers of worse than worse. It’s all dreadful. Dead is dead whether it’s with a bullet or a sword – it’s the same result. I think, to do it for entertainment is sickness beyond sickness. That’s sick. So in the Roman Empire, without question there was a deep sickness and perversion. 

Don’t forget that. I’m making a movie, but when I’m making a movie, I’m looking at old engravings – of course, not of the period, but recorded as, ‘this did happen’, and therefore a good engraver might put down the worst of the worst moments, where somebody has to stand there while a lion comes round to inspect you. Not sure whether to eat you. And the crowd goes wild. What’s the matter with you? What are you, sick?

What we forget is, in the Roman Empire, the lead – the big boys would have plumbing, and the plumbing was all lead. So you’re drinking water through lead. The fresh water’s poisoning the brain. But what they did was inexcusable – but it makes good fodder for interesting films. Because it shows what it was, what they did. 

If I do Gladiator III, I think we’ll try to sidestep the arena. Glad II had to have the arena.

So you’re definitely making Gladiator III?

Oh yeah. Sure. I’m already working on it. I think [the arena] is a rhetorical idea. I’ve just been thinking rhetorically and circling the houses on what it could be. I think I have a good footprint for it.

Ridley Scott, thank you very much.

Gladiator II is in UK cinemas from the 15th November. You can read our in-depth feature on Ridley Scott and the making of his latest epic in the similarly huge, 168-page Film Stories issue 52, available to purchase now.

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