Paul Mescal chickened out of meeting Denzel Washington on Gladiator II set, ran to dressing room: 'Not today'

Paul Mescal was intimidated to meet Denzel Washington for the first time — so he took his cold feet and fled.

The Gladiator II costars appeared on The Graham Norton Show together Friday, on which they revealed the awkward details of their initial encounter.

"The first day that I was actually working with Denzel, he was up in the box, and I was rolling around fighting some monkeys or something," Mescal recalled. "At the end of the day, I was like, 'I must go up and introduce myself to Denzel.'"

Mescal said he tried to hype himself up to meet the two-time Oscar winner. "I was stood at the bottom of the steps, and I stood there for a couple of minutes, and I said, 'Not today,'" the Aftersun star remembered. "So I bailed out and I ran to my dressing room — like, 'Tomorrow I'm going to be a brave boy.'"

The two actors ultimately crossed paths the next day. "The second day, I waited at the bottom of the stairs, and I was like, 'Just gotta stay put,'" Mescal said. "And Denzel walks down, and it was like, 'Oh, God, here we go.' And he shook my hand, and it just felt extraordinary."

Washington then teased Mescal, offering him some sage advice. "He looked at me for ages, and he goes, 'Stop workin' out, man,'" Mescal said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Washington sang the praises of his young costar. "Let me say this: This kid delivers," he said of Mescal. "I'm a pretty good actor. I'm serious, trust me. I saw it when Russell [Crowe, star of Gladiator] did it — he delivered. This kid delivered."

Gladiator II picks up nearly two decades after 2000's Gladiator, following a grown Lucius (Mescal), who, after the events of the first film, had been sent away as a child for his protection. In the sequel, Lucius returns to Rome as a gladiator after a plundering Roman army captures him, and he must fight to survive the horrors of the arena and the dirty politics of the city.

In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Mescal said that despite his positive experience working on his first blockbuster — with legends Washington and director Ridley Scott, no less — he doesn't want or expect Gladiator II to be the pinnacle of his career. "No, I would say that I'm ambitious so that there's no endpoint," he said. "There's never 'making it.' It's not like I've made Gladiator II and I'm like, 'Okay, put up the feet, chill out.' I have so much more that I want to do. As long as people will continue to have me, I'm sure that ceiling will just keep moving to different places in the house."  

Washington also teased his character in the sword-and-sandals epic to EW. "All he had to do is sit there and know that he's the best in the world at everything, and he thinks that, and that's fun," Washington said of his wealthy, ruthless arms dealer and gladiator wrangler Macrinus. "He really didn't have to do any heavy lifting. The boys are down there fighting, being chased by rhinos. I'm just sitting up in this tent, twirling my goblet. That's fun."

Even though his character isn't as physically imposing as Mescal's (nor was he required to work out as much, apparently), Washington noted that he had to train for the part in a different way. "[I didn't have] a whole lot of fight training, but I had to learn to hold my goblet and lift my skirt when stepping over things," he told EW. "I had to learn to walk around with a dress on. I had to learn how to walk with sandals on. I tripped a couple of times in the beginning, but I became one with my peers."

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Gladiator II hits theaters Nov. 22.