Paul Mescal fights pack of baboons in the new Gladiator film

Hollywood director Ridley Scott has teased details of a wild scene in Gladiator 2 featuring Irish actor Paul Mescal and some baboons.

Mescal (27) plays the lead character of Lucius in the film, which is the sequel to the blockbuster hit that starred Russell Crowe as Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius.

The first film won five Oscars in 2000, including best picture and best actor for lead star Crowe.

Scott will return to direct the sequel, and said he has been editing 90 minutes of footage for the film amid the Hollywood actors' strike.

A profile on Scott for the New Yorker read: “In the meantime, he’d been polishing the 90 minutes he had, including a scene in which the hero fights a pack of baboons; he’d been haunted, he said, by a video of baboons attacking tourists in Johannesburg: ‘Baboons are carnivores. Can you hang from that roof for two hours by your left leg? No! A baboon can.’”

Mescal became a household name in 2020 when he portrayed Connell in the screen adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People.

The Maynooth-born actor – who studied at Trinity College Dublin – recently featured in Time magazine’s 100 Next list of influential people on the rise, with fellow Irish actor Colin Farrell praising the “indelibly honest” nature of his acting.

Mescal said in a recent interview that he was feeling both "stressed" and "excited" about landing his biggest role to date in the Gladiator sequel.

Speaking to Esquire magazine prior to the Hollywood actors strike, Mescal said: "I can’t tell you how stressed I am talking about that film in particular, because it’s definitely the biggest one I’ve done. I feel really excited, but, like, it’s difficult to get away from the legacy of the film a bit. I think it’s really well written and it pays homage to the first one, but it’s very much something that I think I can step into and make comfortably my own.”

Mescal said of Crowe: “I’d love to hear his stories from filming, but the character is totally separate.”

Mescal's next big projects include All Of Us Strangers, opposite Andrew Scott and Saoirse Ronan.