Gladiator II costume designer Dave Crossman on working with Ridley Scott

ComingSoon senior editor Brandon Schreur spoke with Gladiator II costume designer Dave Crossman about his experience working on the Ridley Scott-directed sequel. Crossman discussed the biggest challenges in designing the costumes for Gladiator II, how it compares to working on Scott’s Napoleon, and more.

“Gladiator II, from legendary director Ridley Scott, continues the epic saga of power, intrigue and revenge set in ancient Rome. Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius (Paul Mescal) is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical emperors who now rule Rome with an iron fist. With anger in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honor to restore the glory of Rome to his people.”

Gladiator II will be available digitally on December 24, 2024 from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Brandon Schreur: I’m wondering if you can tell me a little about how you got involved. They’ve been talking about Gladiator II for a long time. I remember there were a lot of questions: ‘Is it going to happen?’ Isn’t it going to happen?’ Paul Mescal started. What was going through your mind at the time when you got involved? Was it a big, intensive project to take part in?

Dave Crossman: It was. Basically, I’m involved because I’ve been working with Janty (Yates), the costume designer who made the first Gladiator, since I was 18. We had just finished “Napoleon” together. I had another job because I thought I was doing Gladiator because I can’t even remember what the reason for it was. It simply pushed or moved further back; I did something different.

Janty called me and said, “No, it’s happening and we can do it.” I started by looking at the amounts we needed to do in a three-month period. We had to produce a whole lot of armor in 12 to 13 weeks. You have to go through all these processes of designing and pricing – all of these things had to happen before you could actually push the button and make the 500 sets of Roman, 500 sets of Numidian, all of those things.

We were all in a slight panic just to get it finished on time and shipped to Morocco. Once Ridley starts doing something, there’s no stopping him. He’s kind of relentless and just wants to get it done. If he could film it tomorrow he would. He just wants to move on and get into it. So you always hope that the film lasts two weeks, gives us two more weeks, but that just never happened. So we shot Morocco and of course Ridley shot it very quickly. Then you have to move everything from Morocco to Malta. It’s a constant race.

In between, you try to do good work with the actors, with Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal, their armor. It’s kind of a mix.

I’m sure. Gladiator II is such a great film for many reasons. The scope, the story, the staging and of course the costumes. There’s no doubt in my mind that it was probably a lot of work to get all of this done. What do you think was the biggest challenge with something of this magnitude?

You want to put your own stamp on it, so to speak. I didn’t want to copy everything that was in the first Gladiator. This is obviously a big deal because it’s a pretty iconic film. These comparisons kind of worry you, but I think we’ve changed things like the Praetorian Guard and the Roman army. We changed the look of the officers. There are all these things.

At the same time, you’re still walking in the footsteps of that film. So it obviously has an impact on what Paul looks like, for example. Ridley likes the special look of leather armor, so we had to focus on that for Paul in the Colosseum. Because honestly, you could dress gladiators in a lot of different ways, but Ridley likes this look.

I think the challenge was really time. It was just trying to get everything there. When we actually did the gladiators in the Colosseum, we wanted to customize their look a lot. So it just means everything takes a little longer to make. People flew in from London with boxes of stuff, literally put them on bodies and then onto set. There was a very quick turnaround because the schedule kept moving forward.

Secure. This leads to what I wanted to ask you too. Each of the gladiators in this film has their own look, but it wasn’t lost on me that there are all sorts of background actors in armor and everything, especially in the second half of the film. Did you have to do all of that? How many costumes did you have to make in total?

There were about 500 Romans. Then we fielded about 100 Roman cavalrymen because the people on horseback wore a different type of uniform and helmet. There were about 500 Numidians, and they had more partial armor, i.e. different helmets and helmets from antiquity, which could have come from all over Africa, Eastern Europe or Rome at the time. There was the Praetorian Guard, I think we made a few hundred of them. Then a few hundred real gladiators. It’s just a lot.

It sounds like a lot.

You want to rent some of it, but a lot of the stuff you’re renting has become very old or brittle so you can’t wear it. Often you don’t like the style of the helmet. I love the style of Roman helmets we gave this film and hope to see them used in various other films over the years. They will go to rental places and become something else.

That makes perfect sense. Gladiator II is not a true story but based on history and all. Obviously, ancient Rome was a real place. For this project, do you have to do a lot of historical research to find out what people wore back then?

I think most of my stuff is based on some sort of reality because I’m not particularly interested in making it too fantastical. I looked at all the actual references. Everything I usually took came from the original Roman reference, and then we maybe exaggerated it or improved it, something like that. But I always find it more believable when it comes from a place where you believe it yourself can.

This isn’t the first time you’ve worked with Ridley Scott either. Just before “Gladiator II,” you were involved in “Napoleon,” a big, massive, epic film. What’s harder to do, making all those costumes for a movie set during the French Revolution or ancient Rome? Or are they apples and oranges, two completely different things?

Gladiator was hard, but on some levels it was easier. Napoleon was so complex with all the years we covered and all the different regiments and uniform types. This made Napoleon very complex and very stressful. With Gladiator there are Romans, Praetorians, Gladiators and Numidians. At least you’re dealing with more of a block of things. I definitely think Gladiator was a little easier.

Thanks to Dave Crossman for discussing Gladiator II.

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