Gladiator II Costume Designer Janty Yates on Dressing Denzel Washington — and Ping-Pong

When Janty Yates looked for inspiration for the costumes in 2000’s Gladiator and the upcoming Gladiator II, she didn’t need to pore through books or films to reconstruct the clothing of the Roman Empire: She could just visit modern-day Rome, where monuments and museums retain a close connection to the past.

“You just walk down any street. Trajan’s Column is just filled with legionaries, and generals, and peasants, and you can just get virtually everything off that,” she says. 

The column, which commemorates Roman Emperor Trajan’s victories, was completed in A.D. 113, fairly close to the time when Gladiator and its sequel, set a generation later, take place. Nearly 100 feet high, it includes 2,662 figures in the dress of the time.

Yates’ emphasis on going straight to the source is one of the qualities that has made her director Ridley Scott’s go-to costume designer since Gladiator. He hired her after she worked on one of his son Jake Scott’s films, Plunkett & Macleane, in 1999, and Gladiator won her the Academy Award for Best Costume Design. 

The British designer started out in fashion, and broke into film with 1981’s Quest for Fire, a prehistoric adventure that required her to cut pieces of fur for a cast playing some of the earliest humans.

She has worked on 16 Ridley Scott films, including Hannibal, The Martian, Prometheus, Alien: Covenant and the recent House of Gucci and Napoleon. She was especially excited about Gladiator II because it reunites her with Denzel Washington, with whom she worked on 2007’s American Gangster.

She says that one key to costume design is making sure that actors are very happy with their costumes: “I always say, happy actors, happy performance, happiness all around,” she explains.

She’s also very accustomed to navigating disagreements between actors and directors about how a character should look, joking, “I’m the ping-pong ball.”

She recalls that Washington was especially exacting about his look for Gladiator II. The two-time Oscar winner plays Macrinus, a character Yates describes as “very ambitious, and very quite mean, actually.” She detailed one particularly long fitting at Washington’s home.

“He wanted this jewelry and that jewelry, and he didn’t care how much it cost because he’d pay for it. And so I was just throwing jewelry onto the outfits on the floor. It went on for five hours. And then he said, ‘Oh, forget what I said about jewelry. I like your jewelry, it’s fine,’” says Yates.

The new film follows young gladiator Lucius (Paul Mescal) as he is forced to fight in the Colosseum — another monument that remains standing in modern-day Rome — and stand up to tyrants including Emperor Geta (Joseph Quinn). The cast also includes Pedro Pascal and Connie Nielsen, returning as Lucilla from the first Gladiator.

Also Read: Who Is Denzel Washington's Gladiator II Character, Macrinus?

Yates calls Nielsen “a joy — and for me, she’s a clotheshorse.” Yates aimed for a “very, very simple” look at first, inspired by designers like Halston, who was known for minimalist, elegant designs. 

“I thought it was genius… and it was a perfect look, but Ridley didn’t like it. He wanted more and more detail. A lot more embroidery, a lot more of this, a lot more of that. So it’s fine. We just went back. You can never guarantee that what you think is right is going to be what he likes.”

The Challenges of Gladiator II

Gladiator II was an especially hard film to finish because it was interrupted by the strikes last year. But some things were easier than on the first Gladiator, she said.

“We were up at two or three in the morning, every morning, fitting 3,000 extras on the first one. Now we only had, maximum, probably 500 or 600.”

Another advantage: Roman style didn’t shift too dramatically from the time period of Gladiator to the time of Gladiator II: “You know, fashions didn’t change that much over 20 years,” she says. “Not like now.” That meant she could re-use much of the knowledge she accrued in her research for Gladiator.

Also, for the new film she worked with David Crossman, an expert on military costumes with whom she most recently worked on last year’s Napoleon: ??”He looked after all the gladiators and praetorians and all the Roman legionnaires,” she says. He also worked on Mescal’s costumes.

“So that was a huge weight off my shoulders, really, because I’d done them all in the first one. And so I was able to possibly spend a lot more time on Lucilla’s clothing, on Denzel’s clothing… We had lots of dancing girls and all sorts of characters that Ridley likes to put into his movies to work on. We were not short of work.”

Janty Yates’ Advice to Costume Designers

 MovieMaker spoke with Yates at the SCAD Lacoste Film Festival, held by the Savannah College of Art and Design, at the school’s campus in the medieval French village of Lacoste. SCAD students focus on fields from fashion to film, and Yates imparted her experience with both.

Yates, who received SCAD’s Lifetime Achievement in Costume Design Award during the festival, gave the students some frank advice that applies to all careers in the arts: “Designers sleep under their cutting tables when they don’t have anywhere else to sleep,” she said.

She advised them “to be very willing” to do what they need to do to break into the industry.

“For the first couple of years, do it. Say yes to everything. Run everywhere. Do as much drawing as you can. … Just always be there, willing to learn. And also be willing to not earn a lot of money. Give yourself periods of time trying to save up, give yourself a period of time to pay for the next job, et cetera. 

“So it’s not very cheerful advice, but it does work.”

She also suggested that even when money is tight, beginners should assemble collections of clothing.

“I would, in your own way, create your own collection,” she said. “If you can, create one or two, if not three collections.”

Gladiator II arrives in theaters Friday, from Paramount Pictures.

Main image: Denzel Washington as Macrinus in Gladiator II. Paramount Pictures.