After 24 years Ridley Scott is bringing back Gladiator. Vogue Scandinavia talked with the Swedish cast member Alexander Karim about working with the legendary director and crossing paths with another of his idols on set
The journey to making the second installment of Gladiator has been lined with challenges, but the long wait hasn’t been because of a lack of enthusiasm. Fans and critics alike have eagerly awaited the follow up since the first movie scored five Oscars. Through creative differences and the rights then being sold to a different studio, the script has had time to morph into several shapes. This week the movie finally premieres, and instead of being helmed by Russel Crowe’s gladiator Maximus that – spoiler alert – gets killed off in the first movie, the story now follows his son Lucius, played by it-boy Paul Mescal. The star-studded cast also includes Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington, and Swedish actor Alexander Karim.
A familiar name for most Scandinavians, Karim has appeared in Swedish titles such as Johan Falk, Glaciär and Äkta människor. In recent years he has taken aim at the American movie industry, earning roles in big productions like The Wheel of Time and The Swarm. As Karim prepares for the worldwide release of* Gladiator II*, Vogue Scandinavia was able to grab him for a chat before the premiere in Stockholm. “I’ve seen it and absolutely love it, so I’m not nervous. I’m just enjoying the ride,” he says.
When Karim heard that Scott was casting for a new movie, he auditioned with a self-tape. Three days after his second audition, he got the part of Ravi, a retired gladiator turned doctor who becomes a close confidante of Lucius. Needless to say, the process was unusually quick, as Scott himself was very involved. “You get to that point of excellence and mastery of your craft by caring about every single detail. A couple of weeks later, I was in Ridley’s trailer. It was surreal,” he says.Karim comes from a family of filmmakers, with his siblings Baker and Osmond both being directors. “Me and my brothers, we’ve loved Ridley since we could crawl, so he’s a sort of god in the Karim household. Being able to call them to say ‘I’m going to work with Ridley’ was a special, special thing,” he says.
The movie was filmed in Malta, where the studio had built ancient Rome in full-scale, including a striking replica of the Colosseum. “The mistake I made was that I brought my family to the set when we had 350 well-oiled, buffed gladiators there. It’s difficult getting your wife’s attention when they pass by. I’ll tell you that,” he laughs. After five weeks of shooting, Karim had finished his job – or so he thought. When he got a call from the studio after a test screening, he assumed they had decided to cut his part. “Instead, they said that the screening went really well, and that people had asked for more Ravi. So I went back to shoot, and the character turned into a lot more than what he had been originally,” he says.