The Danish actress comes back this month to the big screen with the movie Gladiator II, as Lucilla, a character that reprises 25 years after the one she played in ‘Gladiator’. In Los Angeles, the actress talked about her preparation and her ability to speak multiple languages attributed to her passion for learning languages and structure.
Q: Connie, why do you speak eight languages?
A: I come from a small country with half a million people. The state of Denmark saw that the people are their primary resource. We don’t have oil, we don’t have diamonds, we don’t have gold, but we do have people. They invested in our education. I came from a small town in the north but in my school they invested in giving me the kind of education that will send me out into the world. I learned languages from a humanist and philosophical way, putting emphasis on the grammar and the structure of the languages. I learned Latin, German, French, English and the Nordic Scandinavian languages in school. Then I went to shoot a show in Italy and had little support so I learned Italian in 3 months. Finally I learned Spanish in California because it is necessary to use it in the right way when you walk around.
Q: Have you ever visited Spain?
A: Yes, many times. I had holidays in Spain, I have been shooting movies in Spain, I have been in promotion in Spain. I loved your country.
Q: Any Spanish author that you recommend?
A: I can’t think of any right now, but I do have read Hemmingway and he was very invested in Spain and the Spanish culture.
Q: What did that feel like to be back, once again, to work with Sir Ridley Scott?
A: I mean, the whole process prior to that was like an amazing process, first of all. Because the process of getting into Lucilla, who was like, you know, all my characters feel like they're like my old girlfriends. [laugh] And so this time was like this old girlfriend that I haven't seen for 25 years. But you all know what it's like when it's a really good friend because it's like you fall right into a conversation like nothing happened. Like no time had passed at all. One of my favorite things, I think everyone who knows me knows that research is my absolute favorite thing. And the way my work process is, is that I take everything that I can know about the culture, the context, the spirituality, all of the things that people did think about at the time. Whether it's, oh, how they felt about their neighbors, or how they felt about their forebears or about their spouses, you know, how did we feel at the time? I'd also had an amazing conversation with Ridley about what he wanted to do with Lucilla this time. And you know, guys, it's a little insane because, you know, it picks up 20 years later, right? The film. And I get to actually play a character that I played when I was a young woman, and now I get to play her as a mature woman. To bring to Lucilla that honed quality, that heartache and heartbreak of the fact that the world is tougher on you than you could ever imagine. In her case, she's watched as the empire that her father had brought almost to its apex, and that the three former emperors had brought into like this golden age, 80 years of a golden age of the empire, all through this idea of stoicism, we control ourselves. We don't do anything for our own ego. We do everything that we do out of duty. And I felt like, oh, I really wanted to imbue that duty and that belief system into Lucilla and then bring it out. Because what has Lucilla seen? She's seen 20 years of the complete and utter decline of any and all of those norms, of all of those ideas. It's all gone. And what you have is this gaudy excess. This corruption. And she's a prisoner of it. She's the legitimate daughter of Marcus Aurelius. Her son had to send him away to save his life, and yet there were no phones at the time. So he's gone. Like she does not know how to find him. And they've even told her that he's dead. So she carries that as a burden on her soul.
Q: How does the experience of the big screen enhance the experience of the movie? Why do you need to see it in the movie theater?
A: So there's just no way that a film like this should not be seen on the big screen. It is an ode to cinema. You know, I wanna just get personal for a second here. Cinema is very special and very important to me. My experience as a child is that of knowing that my great-grandmother was running a movie theater. My great-grandfather built that theater with her. He, we suspect, married her, not least because she was a concert pianist, and he would get free actual music to [laugh] the silent movies that were playing at the time. But also the story goes that my grandmother, you know, my great grandmother's water broke during the performance. It was a cowboy film and without the piano going, you know, the galloping wouldn't really be dramatic enough. And so, you know, he kept on asking her just to hold on. Hold on, and keep on playing. And the story goes that he was quite tight fisted with money and he didn't wanna give back the ticket money for that performance. And so she played through the performance. What's interesting about this is my great, great grandparents also had movie theaters. So from the 1900 up until today, my family is invested in this medium. Like you cannot believe. To me and to my whole family, that screen represents a social gathering the way the theater did earlier, the way storytellers did around the fire when they were traveling from city to city throughout the time, human time. The storytellers have a huge important moral sort of role. And I ask you, is there any place anymore where we talk in the way we are listening? So when we are watching a movie as audiences, it is my experience that every single one of you is telling the story with us, because you're all bringing your own emotions and your own life stories to that story. So the way you felt when you were watching the movie is different than the way you felt because you are bringing in your story. And so you're part of the storytelling process. When you are all sitting together in a room and you are watching this big screen together, that's a communal experience. And that commune I think is incredibly important. I don't wanna overstate, which I probably just did. But I think the movie theater is kind of a little bit sacred, just the way theaters and, you know, grand concert halls are. I think that they're the place where we meet as a community.
Q: When you made the first Gladiator, obviously you were working with an actor like Russell Crowe who just had that charisma, that gravitas to play Maximus. So obviously here we are 24 years later, this is a completely different story. So what was your first impression of working with Paul Mescal?
A You know, like throughout the entire process, people have asked me the comparison, you know, Russell to Paul. And I just think it is such an interesting question. have sort of refused to compare them, but I do think that there is something to be said about, the thing that you said about gravitas. Because both of them have gravitas, but in entirely different ways. I am here to testify that Paul Mescal is a powerful actor in a completely different way from Russell. Because it's a different generation. And with this new generation of boys, and I have five boys, this is a new masculinity. A masculinity that celebrates itself without any recourse to, I don't know, like extremes in that sense. You know, Russell is a man for the ages because Russell has this masculinity that, I don't know, like revels in itself. I think that Paul's masculinity is so different in its vibration 'cause it's so at ease with itself. I don't think you can say a single thing about him that would shake his confidence in who he is. He's using this athleticism rather than sheer strength. And he's using his mind and heart. It's just they're two side by side things and in terms of value, they're equal, but they are so different also because culturally they're different.
Q: how did you use your experience as a mother for this emotional role?
A: I'm so sorry. My oldest son has just lost his dad. And one of the things about a mom is you can't stand your child being in pain. Like what is the saying? You're only as happy as your least happy kid. I mean, it is the strongest emotion in me. It is the strongest, strongest emotion in me. Before I had my kids, I was one type of woman. The type of person that I am after my kids is a completely different person. It's indescribable, the feelings that you have for your child.
Q: Lucilla is a privileged woman from the Patricia class in the Roman and Greek society women were considered important. At the same time though, she was subject to the rules of the patriarchy. I was wondering what kind of inspiration you hope that your character will offer to the women of today, particularly this week that has been so depressing for some of us.
A: So one of the things that I've thought a lot about as a woman and as Lucilla as well, I'll start with, you know, the first time I walked into a museum, first at the Metropolitan and then at British Museum and also at the Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen where they have a huge collection of Roman busts. I went and I found Marcus Aurelius easily. I found Lucius Verus, his, you know, adoptive brother and co emperor. I found them easy. And Lucius Verus did not look very nice. And I knew that her father, though he was a philosopher, so to speak, and a very reasoned man, married his 16-year-old daughter off to a man whose preference apparently, the rumor was, was not for women married his 16-year-old daughter to that co emperor so that their co emperorship would be peaceful. I felt really angry for Lucilla, you know, there she is being used as a pawn. And that was what a woman was in Roman society. She just had absolutely no power. So then that has gotten me thinking throughout my life, that this whole power thing, we never talk about the actual meaning of power in our society. Who decides what power is? And I realized one thing, and that is, we are just being sheep because it doesn't matter what people say. The power is where people say that the power is allocated, because we all know that essentially we can resist arrest. We can resist in so many ways. And every woman in this room has had the experience of resisting. Resisting the power that is put upon them. They know. And so I've gotten into a place now where I think of it, here's nominal power and here's real power. Lucilla was a person who had to consistently exist under nominal power and having to simply ignore it and ignore even the strictures, the actual physical chains that they put on her and to ignore it. Because she has to just know that in her heart is the truth. And the truth is the future. Because sooner or later lies, they lose power. They have more power in the beginning than the truth. In fact, we know that they travel five to six times faster on the internet. But ultimately, the truth does count and the truth is the future.
I just remember so well that they're sitting there and with this regretful laughter, they're saying, can you believe how stupid we were? We took off our wedding rings and we threw them in the big, they were parading through the cities to get all of the gold for the war effort. And so, you know, all of the fascists were like taking off the rings. These were young mothers at the time. They were taking off the wedding rings and throwing them into this big black cauldron that they were parading through the cities. They were laughing, can you believe how stupid we were? We threw our wedding rings into the cauldron. I've never forgotten that. I was this young 21-year-old, and it stuck with me. We all get taken by these ideas, and I see them as a kind of virus. Like, you know, you get sick for a little while and then you get back to normal. And so I think that's what Lucilla does, is she doesn't care about nominal power. She knows that her version of Republicanism, which is different from probably the Republicanism that lost out to the empire during Caesar's and the subsequent time right after the Civil War and so on. She knows that somewhere there is one truth only, and that is that every human is born free. It's that simple. The simplicity of that is gonna last through the ages. I don't care what we are gonna be doing, what kind of mess we're gonna be making, but that is the truth
Q: What surprised you the most about being a woman in Rome? Because you are playing the only woman among those powerful men also.
A: Well, I was gonna say, you know, I've been the only woman in almost every film except for Wonder Woman [laugh] So it's just part of working in Hollywood. And it is an interesting thing to do. Like I can compare it to when, you know, we were 50 women and one man on Wonder Woman, and you know, when we were down on the beach fighting, the husbands and boyfriends were up by the playground with the various kids of all of the Amazons. It was kind of funny to see the mirror image. And there is a feeling of it being a skewed image. 'Cause the real relationships that would've been in Lucilla's world would have included more women, wouldn't it? And at the same time, you know, women were banished from, you know, any institution that didn't stop them from probably leading most households. Anyone who's lived in Italy knows that the mama is the ruler and the daddy is hanging on by a mere thread. So all of these nominal powers again, you know, I will say, you know, all of the boys in this film are so wonderful. Like you take Fred and Joseph and Paul as just wonderful. And it was great being with them. Like as an older actor also to tell them, you know, advocate for yourself, advocate for your role. Just don't be afraid. Yes, he's an icon, but he's a human. You can go and talk to him. And they were so lovely. And then obviously, you know, I also had the pleasure of doing scenes with another icon like with Denzel Washington, who is just a powerhouse. Like just his actual physical presence is electrifying. I come from a long line of women who don't give up. And so I just keep on keeping on. And I focus on my work and I focus on my character and I fight for her. That's what I do in every film. I fight for my gal. Yeah.
María Estévez
Correspondent writer
