Connie Nielsen has done this before.
She’s donned the ankle-length tunics and fastened the Romanesque stolas to her shoulder with a brooch, she’s worked through the “chaos” that comes with filming on a Ridley Scott set, and she’s travelled far and wide on globe-trotting press tours.
But this time, with Gladiator II, she’s got something up her sleeve that she didn’t have 24 years ago.
Watch the video above.
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The wisdom that comes with age.
“I think, more than anything, it really informed Lucilla,” Nielsen, 59, tells 9honey Celebrity in Sydney, noting how it didn’t change how she would have portrayed Lucilla in Gladiator II, but the real life experience she’s cultivated since the first film did play a part.
“I’ve felt in my own life how age actually gives you a real sense of power.”
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“I think society tends to put all the power of women on a very young girl and they kind of like… fetishise the young girl, the young woman,” Nielsen continues.
“But in reality, it’s the fully-grown, mature woman who really sits so comfortably in her power. And that physical experience is so wonderful.
“I wanted to be sure that I put that experience into Lucilla as she continues to wrestle with the ludicrous people who… quite literally are tearing down the greatness of Rome.”
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Gladiator II sees Lucilla – still the daughter of former Emperor Marcus Aurelius but this time also the wife of a high-ranking general (played by Pedro Pascal) – once again grapple with the precarious position that women in politics often find themselves in.
She’s powerful, but powerless at the same time. Her influence is quietly spread with whispers and schemes, not violently demonstrated by controlling the Colosseum and the gladiators within.
It’s something she’s seen time and time again play out throughout her career with women in Hollywood, and life in general.
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“As a woman, we still don’t have the same access and we don’t have the same opportunity [as men],” Nielsen says.
“And it doesn’t matter how much money women-led films make, they still have to fight harder to be respected and to be given, say, the sequels, that and be paid for them the way they would pay a male director.”
One only has to look at the box office success of Margot Robbie’s Barbie, and how that still was not enough for it to garner widespread recognition come awards season – Greta Gerwig wasn’t even nominated for Best Director at the Oscars, whereas Christopher Nolan and Oppenheimer‘s nods were seemingly endless.
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“One of the things that I feel that I have observed in my life now is that it’s not just about putting women in at the top, it’s also about whether those women at the top centre the politics and strategies that are necessary to make space for women below them,” Nielsen continues.
She cites a study that looked at the impact of Norway’s 1992 legislative reform, which mandated a gender quota of at least 40 per cent of women at the executive board level.
“After 10 years, they kind of went over and looked at it, and they saw that those women had not, in fact, helped even out the pay disparity between female and male employees in their corporations,” Nielsen says.
“So it really showed it wasn’t just about women themselves, but about what type of women we put into leadership roles. And I think that’s something that maybe young women should be looking at.
“And men as well, who are interested in creating a future that really stops otherising and sidelining or silencing the experiences of the many different types of groups that we have in our community.”
Gladiator II hits Australian cinemas on November 14. Tickets are on sale now.
