Ridley Scott says Russell Crowe called Joaquin Phoenix 'terribly unprofessional' while making “Gladiator”
"He was in his prince’s outfit saying, 'I can’t do it,'" the director remembers.
Joaquin Phoenix recently made headlines for dropping out of a planned gay romance film with director Todd Haynes at the last minute, but the actor's previous collaborators say that Phoenix has occasionally been finicky even on movies he did complete.
Phoenix earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as the villainous Commodus in 2000's Gladiator, but he apparently had doubts about the role on set. In a new interview with the New York Times timed to the upcoming release of the long-awaited sequel Gladiator II, director Ridley Scott shared a memory of Phoenix getting on costar Russell Crowe's nerves on the set of the original sword-and-sandals blockbuster.
"[Joaquin] was in his prince’s outfit saying, 'I can’t do it,'" Scott recalled, "I said, 'What?' And Russell said, 'This is terribly unprofessional.'"
Related: Now entering the arena: Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal unsheathe Gladiator II
Scott added, "I can act as a big brother or dad. But I’m quite a friend of Joaquin’s. Gladiator was a baptism of fire for both of us in the beginning."
Representatives for Crowe and Phoenix did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly's request for comment on this anecdote.
Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.
Inspired by Scott's love of the 1872 Jean-Léon Gérôme painting Pollice Verso (a.k.a Thumbs Down), Gladiator stars Crowe as Maximus, a Roman general who is exiled by Phoenix's Commodus after a power struggle and ends up enslaved as one of the titular gladiators, fighting his way back home to Rome. Crowe won Best Actor for his performance and the movie won Best Picture, but Scott did not take home Best Director (an honor he still has not won, despite three total nominations over his career).
In a 2018 interview with Collider, Phoenix shared his side of the Gladiator experience.
"I absolutely have that nervousness on every movie...but I think that probably Gladiator was one of the most intimidating because the first set that I went on was just massive," Phoenix told Collider. "It looked like it was acres of land, and tons of trucks and trailers and, you know, hundreds of extras, and multiple cameras. Suddenly the scale of this hit me and I was overwhelmed by that. I didn't think that I was going to be able to make it through that."
Phoenix continued, "I went to [Scott] and said, 'I don’t know what to do, I just can't do this. I don't know what you're gonna do. This just isn’t gonna be possible.' And Ridley was really smart. He just shot me for four hours and he didn't put film in the camera...he wasn't gonna waste film. He's like, 'It's gonna be hours before this kid f—ing gets anything, if at all, so I'm not gonna waste film.'”
Related: Ridley Scott filmed Napoleon like a general: 'I plan it, in a funny kind of way, like a battle'
Scott recently reunited with Phoenix on Napoleon, which hit theaters last year but recently released a much longer director's cut on Apple TV+. The director tells the Times that his star was also wavering on that historical epic, before fellow filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson (who previously worked with Phoenix on The Master and Inherent Vice) helped with some uncredited rewrites on the script.
"Tommy was doing Licorice Pizza, advising me how to do Napoleon,” Scott said. "It turned into a lot of fun, actually. Three of us in this room screaming with laughter."
So, for anyone who felt like Napoleon's relationship with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) in that movie felt as comedic as Phantom Thread...now we know why.
