Connie Nielsen breaks down her emotional return to the Colosseum in 'insane' “Gladiator II”

Plus, why she told all the new castmembers to "really feel free to act the f--- out of it."

Gladiator II star Connie Nielsen says the upcoming film "looks insane" — or so she's heard.

The actress, 59, hasn't actually seen the film because, well, she doesn't really watch her own projects. "I'm not great at that," she admits, sheepishly. "It's just like this Danish sort of, I don't know, we have this humility principle that we grow up with."

But what she can say is that her experience making the film "was spectacular just watching it with my bare eyes." Nielsen credits director Ridley Scott, who previously directed her in the five-time Oscar-winning original Gladiator, with that experience.

Related: Everything we know about Gladiator II so far

"Ridley has access to technologies that, back at the time of Gladiator [in 2000], were still somewhat in their infancy," she explains. "This time, you will see what I saw with my own eyes, which is that everything has been enhanced through the latest technology. You can just imagine that thing that Ridley does so well, which is the mixture of the actual real, old-fashioned film craft — real sets, real people, real everything, and quite extraordinary technology just even in creating those real things — and then add to that the new tools that he has at his fingertips."

The long-awaited sequel picks up 16 years after the events of the first film. After Maximus (Russell Crowe) died in the Colosseum in the original, Lucilla sent her son, Lucius (played by Spencer Treat Clark in the first movie and Normal People star Paul Mescal in the sequel), to Numidia, on the northern coast of Africa, to shield him from the increasing corruption of Roman society. Her plan could only work for so long, though. When Roman forces led by her lover, General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), invade Numidia and unknowingly take Lucius captive — killing his wife and many fellow soldiers in the process — Lucius finds himself back in Rome, ready to seek revenge.

Rome is led by twin emperors, Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn), who have a strong lust for both blood and power. As for Lucilla, Nielsen teases she's "in a very tenuous situation" where she's kept as a sort of icon that powerful people such as the emperors can exploit to maintain their own power. "She's both feared by those who are in power, as well as exploited by them as much as they can," Nielsen explains. "And so Lucilla was very unusual at the time in the Roman Empire. Her life was just constantly up for grabs and endangered all the time."

Related: Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, and more take over the arena in epic first Gladiator II trailer

Much to her horror, Lucilla first realizes her son is back in Rome when she sees him fighting in the Colosseum as a gladiator, one of many owned by Macrinus (Denzel Washington). Nielsen's return to the set of the famous amphitheater was also emotional, though for different reasons. "Ridley really wants people to have visceral experiences that they then express when they're on camera, and you get that experience to walk onto this Colosseum, which was as astounding as it was back when I walked onto the Colosseum floor 25 years ago," she says. "It's the same. And it was a very emotional experience for me. I had so many wonderful memories from the time of doing it and it was kind of marvelous to look back and then all of a sudden be there again. It was frankly quite mind-boggling to have that experience."

Nielsen is one of only two returning cast members from the original, with Derek Jacobi also reprising his role of Gracchus. As such, she had some unique insight into working with Scott that she was able to share with newcomers. "One of the things I would say is, I would explain that despite his iconic status, Ridley is so interested and open and patient with ideas," she says, adding, "and I just would encourage everyone to feel free, despite the scale of this project, to really feel free to act the f--- out of it."

One person who did not return for the film is Crowe — hardly a shock, given his character's fate in the original. Nevertheless, the actor has publicly expressed his jealousy that he's not a part of the sequel. Though she hasn't spoken to her former costar, Nielsen says she empathizes with his sentiments: "I can completely understand his feelings. It must feel pretty crazy that you're not part of this one, and I sympathize deeply."

Related: First footage of Gladiator II reveals Paul Mescal's Lucius in bloody baboon battle

Though he's not physically in Gladiator II, the legend of Maximus and everything he stood for looms large over the sequel. His looming presence is exemplified in a poignant moment in the trailer (and seen here in the image above) in which Lucilla gives Maximus' ring to Lucius. Referring to the exchange, Nielsen says, "I think that when Maximus dies in the original, there's this feeling, this experience of losing not just her past, but because he dies, also her future with this man. And I think the ring, when she gives that to Lucius, she's passing a future."

She continues, "That ring represents not just the future of Lucius and therefore indirectly of someone else, but also of the ideas and the values for which we live and die. I think those values and the love of those values were kind of lost for 1,500 years and made a comeback in Europe in the late 19th century or late 18th century. And these ideas have been so important. Even today, we are on our way to go and vote. And this idea that we have this future that depends on our connection to those values, the values of freedom and of the right to choose your representative, that's what that ring is."

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All this amounts to a sequel that was only a glimmer in Nielsen's eye when Entertainment Weekly spoke with her in 2020 for a 20th-anniversary retrospective on the first film. Did the resulting project, now that it's ready to hit theaters on Nov. 22, live up to those hopes and dreams? "It was impossible for me to have any expectations really to what it was because I had no idea where they were going to go in terms of the story," she says. "I was absolutely blown away first by the script, and super happy with the deeply respectful way of reentering the story, and at the same time, just creating this odyssey of this young person back to home and back to his destiny. It was marvelous."

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.