Paul Mescal’s ‘Gladiator II’ trainer made him strip to see how fit he was

Paul Mescal’s polished look in the new Gladiator II began with him undressing.

“He comes to the hotel and he says: ‘Can we go up to your room?'” said Mescal on Wednesday in an appearance d. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, that sounds good.’ And he’s like, ‘In your underwear, please.’ And I think, ‘That’s how this works.’ So I’m like (standing) there in my underwear and he’s like circling me and, like, doing his, like, mental… basically just doing, like, looking at my body scientifically.”

Watch his interview in the video below:

Mescal said there was intense silence afterward.

“And he just looks at me with his head tilted,” the actor said, “and he says, ‘There’s a canvas to work with here.'”

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Mescal laughed as he told the story, but the trainer was serious about giving him numbers on how much weight he wanted him to add to each body part.

The 28-year-old actor said his diet was “all the chicken you could imagine.”

He and the trainer worked together for “two or three months leading up to it,” Mescal said. “I was on stage at the time, which was really helpful because you get days to yourself.”

Mescal recently told Weekly entertainment that the film, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards starring Russell Crowe, was the most physically demanding of his career. He plays Lucius, who is captured from the place he had been sent for protection and taken back to Rome, where the violence ensues.

“I loved how separate the fights are from each other and what I’m really proud of is how you can feel the cumulation of the violence on his body as the film progresses. The fights are not like smooth swordplay,” said he . “You can feel towards the end what Lucius is saying – it’s about survival. It’s like your body wants to accumulate all this punishment. And it’s about hanging on to it as the movie goes on. And I think it’s much more interesting to see someone who psychologically has an ability to survive rather than someone who is innately skilled.And I think Lucius has a dog in him that will survive environments that other people don’t should, so I’m proud of all of them in different ways.”

Mescal noted on Colbert that he is no longer physically in the same place he was during filming.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” he joked. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case here at the moment.”