What's It Like to Die in Those About to Die? Anthony Hopkins on "Interesting" Death Scene
Heavy lies the crown atop a Roman emperor’s head — especially with Hopkins in the role.
Anytime you’ve got acting royalty like Anthony Hopkins at the top of your prestige casting sheet, you’ve got to make the most of such a golden opportunity. That goes double when Hopkins is playing actual royalty — the ancient Roman kind — in Peacock’s epic swords-and-sandals gladiator series Those About to Die.
All 10 episodes of executive producer/director Roland Emmerich’s sweeping look at the hidden intrigue behind Rome’s notorious bloodsport pastime are streaming now on Peacock (watch it here!), and it’s Hopkins’ valiant sendoff as the aging Roman Emperor Vespasian that ramps up all the political power plays that truly are at stake.
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Those About to Die: Anthony Hopkins on Emperor Vespasian's “Very Interesting” Death Scene
With his offspring waiting in the wings as a potential heir, Hopkins’ Roman Emperor Vespasian begins the series already aware that his days on Earth are numbered. Resigned to fate and wearily weighing how the empire will fare once he’s gone, he musters a mighty will to face death with an emperor’s proper dignity — with Hopkins delivering a poignantly stirring death-scene performance at the end of the series’ third episode.
“I found the death scene at the end very interesting,” Hopkins recently shared with Entertainment Weekly after the fate of his resolute, elder statesman was revealed. “Roland Emmerich told me, ‘Just stand there. Just take your time.’ I said, ‘Okay, what do you want me to do? He said, ‘Look like you're dying.’ I stood there and they put the crown and laurels on me.”
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As a two-time Academy Award winner, of course Hopkins has a way of making even the most demanding of dramatic acting tasks seem like simple second nature. But Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day) — a director who knows a thing or two himself about nailing a blockbuster scene — gave the iconic actor all the credit for knowing how to give a wizened old Roman Emperor’s final moments the proper gravitas such a heavy occasion calls for.
“[Vespasian] was a little bit of this gruffy man, and we talked about it before, and ‘Play him as gruff as you've ever played somebody,’” Emmerich shared with EW. “And he did that! The favorite scene with him was when he wants to die standing, which was really, really cool because it's so unique that people at that point actually thought that they can become divine or God when they're standing.”
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Hopkins might just be as close to cinematic divinity as living actors get here on this side of eternity. But he gave a gracious nod to Emmerich and fellow Those About to Die director Marco Kreuzpaintner (The Lazarus Project) for having a clear idea in mind of how his emperor should face eternity.
“It's not brain surgery — there's nothing difficult at all,” explained Hopkins. “Some older directors would sometimes do take after take after take, and that gets tiresome. But no, these two directors knew exactly what they wanted.”
Stream all 10 episodes of Those About to Die on Peacock here.
