Ridley Scott didn't consult Russell Crowe for Gladiator 2 because his character is dead

It seems everyone in the world asked Russell Crowe his thoughts about Gladiator II except for his former director, Ridley Scott. “I think [Russell Crowe] is still one of the best actors in the world, and I think we have a good relationship. I hope we do,” Scott said in a new interview with Empire magazine (via Deadline). “As long as he doesn’t start bitching about how he wasn’t consulted. Why would I? He’s dead!”

Crowe feels the same way, ultimately, reiterating to the many reporters who have asked him about it over the past year that his character is “six feet under” and that the movie has “nothing to do with” him. “They should be fucking paying me for the amount of questions I am asked about a film I am not even in,” he groused last year, though he did add that if Scott in all his wisdom felt the urge to return to the world of Gladiator that the sequel wouldn’t be “anything other than spectacular.”

Of course, he didn’t necessarily always think his Gladiator was spectacular (despite ultimately winning an Oscar for his role as Maximus). Crowe has claimed in the past that the script was barely workable until he came on board and helped Scott with rewrites. “I remember Russell feeling like that. I remember that he definitely had some thoughts and feelings,” his co-star Connie Nielsen told Vanity Fair in July. She described Scott as “extremely collaborative” and “open to ideas,” which is “why someone like him could handle someone like Russell saying, ‘There are only 23 pages that are workable.’ Another director would say, ‘Well, fuck you too—and do it over there, please.'”

Given Crowe’s sense of ownership over Gladiator (be it right or wrong), it might make sense for him to feel a little left out. And indeed, in some of the many responses he’s had to give about this sequel against his will, he has admitted to being a little “jealous” that other people get to experience what he once did as the star of Gladiator. “I’m slightly uncomfortable with the fact they’re making another one—because, of course, I’m dead and I have no say in what gets done,” he said on the Kyle Meredith With… podcast in June (via Deadline). “But a couple of the things I’ve heard I’m like—no, no, no, that’s not in the moral journey of that particular character. But I can’t say anything, it’s not my place, I’m six foot under. So we’ll see what that is like.”