Paul Mescal deliberately avoided watching 'Gladiator' before beginning work on the sequel.
Although he saw Sir Ridley Scott's epic when it hit cinemas in 2000, the 28-year-old actor refused to revisit the movie until work on the movie wrapped.
However, once he did watch the film, Mescal admitted he felt the "pressure" of whether ‘Gladiator II’ would live up to the first flick, which saw Russell Crowe win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as enslaved General Maximus Decimus Meridius.
He told Empire magazine: "Over New Year's, we watched it with a group of my best friends down in Cork, and that's when I was like, 'Oh s***. The pressure.'"
Despite feeling nervous, the 'All of Us Strangers' star is quietly confident the sequel will impress audiences when it hits theatres on 15 November.
He said: "Whatever anxiety I had about living up to the first one, I now feel totally at ease. In fact, I'm confident.
"I'm excited for people to see it rather than hoping we're going to get away with it – that would be the worst-case scenario."
The 'Normal People' actor plays the gladiator Lucius - the grandson of Rome's former emperor Marcus Aurelius and son of Lucilla - says the movie is an emotionally-taxing take on the classic "hero's journey".
He said: "I think the root of this is a hero's journey, and somebody who's reticent and doesn’t know his place in the world.
"There's a latent emotionality in the film, but the scale of performance [it required] couldn't be what I'm used to – which is kind of more internal and inviting an audience in."
Mescal stars with Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington and Joseph Quinn in 'Gladiator II' and the Irish actor heaped praise on Alien' director Scott for teaching him invaluable lessons about filmmaking, even if he hasn't quite grasped their exact meanings yet.
He explained: "He doesn’t buy into the narrative that people set up around him. He's just single-minded and focused on the job at hand.
"He's been working in film for twice as long as I've been alive, and he refers to the process of filmmaking as being a day job.
"I haven't been able to fully understand what that means yet, because I'm at a kind of eager part of my career where it feels like it's your life."
