They are two of the most anticipated movies of the year and now that Gladiator II and Wicked – or ‘Glicked’ – have both hit screens, two of the films’ stars, Paul Mescal and Ariana Grande, have sat down to discuss press tours, audition processes and how they found being in front of the camera.
Paul, 28, plays Lucius Verus in the follow-up to 2000’s Gladiator, while 31-year-old Ariana stars alongside Cynthia Erivo as she portrays Glinda Upland in the first part of the big screen adaptation of the Broadway and West End musical, the second of which will follow in November 2025.
As part of Variety’s Actors on Actors series, the stars – whose movies shared a release date last month – opened up on the makings of each flick. And Ariana admits that she and Cynthia – who have been trolled online for their connection while promoting Wicked – are ‘insufferable’ together.
Paul says to the singer, ‘I’m watching you guys in the press tour. You’re obviously in love with each other,’ to which she responds, ‘Insufferable. Yes. We’re horrible. It’s bad.’
And Paul – who is set to star in the film adaptation of musical Merrily We Roll Along – reveals his own love for musical theatre and why he wouldn’t even have been born without it.
‘My parents met onstage doing Pirates of Penzance,’ he shared. ‘So I have this weird thing that somewhere in my blood, or in my heart or head, that the act of being onstage feels like an important place.’ He continued, ‘Dad was the pirate king, and my mum was one of the maids. Thank God for that production, because I wouldn’t be here.’
Despite being in competition at the box office, Ariana admitted she is a big fan of Paul’s performance in Gladiator II – and even squealed when she saw Paul don Maximus’ iconic breastplate.
‘I was with my best friend, Doug, and we were watching together. We both squealed,’ she said. ‘Internally, I was squealing,’ Paul replied.
And although they seem like worlds away from each other – Ancient Rome and the fictional Emerald City, to be exact – Ariana believes the movies have more in common than initially meets the eye.
‘I feel like our movies are strangely similar,’ she tells Paul. ‘I know that sounds absolutely absurd, but I really do feel like they are, because there are strong themes of evil versus good and dictatorship.’
‘Yeah, absolutely,’ Paul agrees before suggesting, ‘And also, not to sell the whole “Glicked” thing, but in terms of a double feature — thematically similar, but then also totally different meals.’
Going in depth about how each of them landed the roles, Ariana spoke of how she rehearsed for two months prior to her first audition as she wanted to sound authentic in singing opera before meeting with casting directors. She then endured a three-and-a-half-month audition process before waiting for four weeks to find out if she had got the part.
It was a less intense process for Paul, who says he met with producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher just once. He says, ‘It went quiet for a little while. I was like, “They’ve gone to somebody else”.’
But then, he received an invitation to Zoom with director Ridley Scott and they ‘spoke for 10 minutes about the film, 10 minutes about his dog and 10 minutes about the sport that [Paul] played growing up.’
He concluded, ‘In your head, you’re like, “Of course there’s going to be camera tests, auditions,” but there just wasn’t any of those things.’
Samuel McManus is a senior content creator for Bauer Media, writing celebrity news and features across five of the company’s brands – heat, Closer, Grazia, Bella and Yours. Samuel has worked at Bauer Media since November 2024.