Paul Mescal says it was “fun” playing Lucius, the former heir to the Roman Empire, in the upcoming historical epic. Gladiator II

“I ate a lot of chicken and lifted heavy things,” Mescal, 28, joked during an Oct. 25 appearance The Graham Norton Show.

While preparing to play the ex-king forced into slavery, the Kildare Irish native “worked with a trainer who circled me like a shark and said, ‘There’s a canvas for me to work with can’.” ”

Mescal became so muscular that his co-star Pedro Pascal gave him a clever nickname. “I call him Brick Wall Paul…He has So strong. “I would rather be thrown out of a building than have to fight him again,” said 49-year-old Pascal Vanity Fair in July.

Mescal told Norton that his coach “went into town and I saw him every day. It was fun.”

However, that is Normal people Star admits to having some reservations when it came to his fitness regime. “I did everything he asked, but I like to drink and I like to smoke, so I drew a line in the sand when it came to that.”

Mescal showed off his abs – and then some – in the trailer for the film, which features him fighting, among other things, a rhinoceros in the famous Roman Colosseum.

But another of Norton’s guests completely disagreed with Mescal’s assessment that training is “fun”: Eddie Redmayne – who recently underwent his own physical transformation and was ripped apart for the role of an assassin in the Peacock series Day of the Jackal.

“I completely disagree with Paul – it wasn’t fun, it was terrible,” he said Fantastic beasts alum, 42, said. “You read a scene in the script where it says, ‘He’s topless, curvy and muscular,’ and you think, ‘Oh damn, here comes the chicken diet.’ ”

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Saoirse Ronan and Denzel Washington – who also star Gladiator II – also appeared in the episode. Mescal admitted he was intimidated by meeting the legendary Washington, 69.

“It was a big day in my life – it was incredible,” he recalled. “I spent the first day thinking, ‘I have to introduce myself to him,’ and I stood there for several minutes before deciding, ‘Not today.’ The next day I decided to be a brave boy!”

The highly anticipated sequel to the Russell Crowe epic arrives 24 years after the 2000 original gladiator Film – which won Best Picture at the Oscars.

Gladiator II hits theaters November 22nd.