Society has spent months making fun of straight men for how often they think about the Roman Empire, but today those men are vindicated because Paul Mescal is filming Gladiator II in a fringed leather skirt. Respectfully, I am thinking very hard about the Roman Empire right now.
Mescal was photographed on Tuesday doing reshoots for the sequel to the 2000 Russell Crowe epic, which is set to come out in November. It stars Mescal as Lucius Verus, a role that seemingly requires him to wear all sorts of ancient fighter garb, like intricately laced knee-high boots and chunky leather belts. On Tuesday, he looked, in the words of the Daily Mail, “bloodied and bruised” (and, in my estimation, sweaty) while filming a battle scene, before swapping out his crest of armor out for a breezy-looking tunic to clamber into a prison wagon. During a brief shooting break, he was seen sneaking off to smoke a cigarette. (Was Natalie Portman nearby?)
Putting aside the anachronism of the cigarette, a few scholarly inquiries are currently stewing in my mind, such as whether Paul Mescal’s chin scruff is historically accurate and what the coat of arms hanging out in close proximity to his chest symbolizes. There is also the matter of his impressive gladiator spray tan, which is giving his typically Irish-looking forearms a glorious Etruscan glow. Can the husbands of TikTok explain that?
