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Rogue Animals, Roman Ruins, and Sir Anthony Hopkins: Behind the Scenes of Those About to Die at Comic-Con
Playing a gladiator is no joke.
In San Diego, you either rise or die.
While we all obsessively watch the 2024 Paris Olympics, there's a ~retro~ sport that’s on our minds. Yep, chariot racing. Though not an Olympic sport (yet), it was on full display at a thrilling activation and buzzy panel at San Diego Comic-Con for the hit Peacock Original Those About to Die. We attended both and sat down with the cast and director to learn more about the bloody, sexy, sporty series.
Here are five of the most exciting things we learned.
1. Acting with Sir Anthony Hopkins is as epic as it sounds.
To depict a legend, you cast a legend. That was Roland Emmerich’s thinking when he asked Anthony Hopkins to play Emperor Vespasian of the Flavian Dynasty. “We sent it out to him, not actually believing that he would say yes, and all of a sudden, he said yes,” said the director. It helped that Hopkins turned out to be a history buff (which should surprise no one). “I had so many good discussions with him about Rome and the culture. He's a total fan,” added Emmerich.
So, what was it like for the young stars who had to perform opposite one of the greatest living actors? Jojo Macari, who plays Vespasian’s son Domitian, shared the following:
“It was a true pleasure and an honor to get to work with one of the greatest actors of all time. Day one, I am on set and I'm going to film with Anthony, and I'm standing there getting quite sweaty in the toga. I'm like, ‘What the hell am I going to say? This is Sir Anthony Hopkins. This is crazy. This is mad.’ He eventually comes in, surrounded by all his people. He comes up and he's like, [impression of Hopkins] ‘Jojo. Tony. How are you doing? Respect [fist bump].’ What a gentleman. He makes you feel so comfortable, like you can do an amazing job. He's just such a generous man.”
Though not everyone got to shoot scenes with Hopkins, the rest of the cast was just as eager to soak up every detail as we were. Moe Hashim, who plays Kwame, jumped in:
“We were all staying at the same hotel, and we knew when Jojo had the scenes with Anthony Hopkins. So, we're all basically waiting for him in the lobby to come back from work and he’d come in and be like, ‘Settle down, settle down!’ It was like story time.”
What did said story time contain? Jojo said he’s trying to keep everything he learned from Hopkins close to the vest, but he let us in on one moment:
“We were about to go for the first take and Anthony's like, ‘Jojo, Jojo, tell me to shut up if you want, but would you mind if I gave you a note?’ I’m like, ‘Oh my God, please, that would be incredible.’ And he says, ‘Well, I remember the last time I had to do a scene a bit like this. It was with Marlon Brando.’ I'm like, ‘All right, okay, bloody hell.’ And he goes, ‘The key is, Jojo, you've got to come in and say it really bloody loudly’ [Laughs]. Which was funny and a bit of a joke, but the message is, ‘You've got to come in with confidence. Come at me; match me. Come and shout in my face. I want you to do it.’ And so, I did.
You heard it here first, folks. Sir Anthony Hopkins’ acting advice: Say it really bloody loudly.
2. The show’s chariot training was no joke.
Roland Emmerich remarked at one point, “This is mainly a sports show.” Fans of historical costume drama might beg to differ, but racing and combat are undeniably at the heart of the series. With such a focus on charioteering, the production worked with a special team of Hungarian horses and trainers to bring the sport to life. Dimitri Leonidas, who plays Scorpus, shared that training began on seated carriages, then moved on to two-horse chariots, and finally culminated with learning to drive a four-horse chariot. “The power of those horses is something that I was really glad to experience, but it's insane. Like, [thinking about] the guys that actually did it, the stunt guys and [the guys] 2000 years ago, it's insane,” Leonidas remarked.
When asked if there were any close calls working with the horses, Leonidas revealed that he came closer to those intense experiences than he was supposed to. When shooting a scene where he was meant to simply hold the reins and wave, something startled one of the horses. The horse started to run, and the other three took the cue and followed suit.
“Everything just turned into chaos. I could hear screaming; I could see stunt guys running out of the way. We were charging towards the turn. So, I drop back and pull, but as you fall back, your eyes are in line with the sand the horses are kicking up. I'm trying to hold my eyes open and it's like an earthquake happening at the end of your arms.”
Luckily, all the training paid off. Leonidas was able to make the turn, averting disaster. That didn’t stop the crew from panicking momentarily – a set photographer later shared with him, ‘We all thought you were going to make BBC news.’”
3. Roland Emmerich brought the movie magic to TV.
Director Roland Emmerich is best known for blockbusters like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012. Those About to Die is his first foray into television, and the pace at which a TV series must be filmed shocked him. “You have no time. It's really quite crazy. I directed five [episodes] and another director, Marco Kreuzpaintner, did the other five. We’d look at each other and say, ‘Oh my f***ing God.’”
Despite the challenges of filming with so little time, the actors knew they were in the hands of a master of the craft.
Iwan Rheon, who plays Tenax, said, “[He’s] a director that trusts the cast and lets us get on with it, but then also [gives] us a wonderful note every now and then, which completely changes the way you do a scene.”
Jojo Macari added, “Roland works on a crazy scale. [His] movies are massive... Walking onto a Roland Emmerich set means you get brought into Roland's world.”
Gabriella Pession, who plays Antonia (and lives in Rome herself), charmingly shared, “Roland tells me all the technicality behind what he's doing, which is genius — it’s brilliant — and I always say, ‘Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, of course.’ I have no clue what he's talking about. It's so technical, and for him it's so easy.”
Emmerich had to adopt new techniques and technologies to shoot the series. When asked if he’ll be applying anything he learned to his future films, he answered, “I [learned] about volume stages. We had to shoot there, and it became about, ‘what can you do in a volume stage?’ And it's quite a lot. I ended up shooting 108 days on a volume stage, which I think is a record.” He then explained to the crowd that a volume stage is a series of large screens, eight meters high, that are arranged in a circular setup. The screens provide immersive virtual backgrounds.
4. Playing a gladiator is a dangerous game.
Moe Hashim, who plays Kwame, went through intensive combat training to portray an animal tracker who is enslaved and forced to fight as a gladiator. Hashim said he “really and truly [felt] like a 10-year-old kid in gladiator gear with the sword just running around.” But his battles were no joke.
When filming the scenes in which Kwame fights a massive lion, “it was actually my stunt double in a suit, and he was cabled up,” he said. That may have been his easiest opponent, as he then had to face all 6’8” and 320 pounds of Martyn Ford, a bodybuilder with MMA training. Ford plays Flamma, a gladiator with a taste for killing.
The most difficult part of filming Flamma scenes was “reminding Martyn, who plays Flamma, that we are actors, and we are pretending,” said Hashim, laughing. “And all the moves are choreographed, so there's no need for surprises. He did forget a lot of the time because he's actually a real fighter in a certain way. My body’s still recovering.”
5. History came to life for the actors.
Despite the use of volume stages to fill in the background of ancient Rome, filming in the city itself gave the cast an opportunity to immerse themselves in their subject matter. Jojo Macari sharing another cheeky anecdote, punctuated with some a real historical fact:
“On my first day in Rome, I was like, ‘I want to go on a little walk.’ I walked up the Palatine Hill, the most famous hill in Rome, walking around the ruins of the palace, and I'm trying not to even read anything. I'm just like, ‘Let's soak up the vibes, see what's happening.’ I went to finally read one of the plaques: ‘This would've been the bedchambers of Emperor Domitian.’ Actual Domitian fact: He used to lock himself in his bed chambers for days, release a load of insects and then try and catch them by skewering them on a pen. So, he'd just stand there for hours.”
You know what’s more entertaining than releasing a load of insects in your bedroom so you can skewer them with a pen? Watching Those About to Die. It’s less messy, too.
Every episode of Those About to Die is streaming now.
