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How Peacock's Those About to Die Brought Ancient Rome to Life (EXCLUSIVE)
The cast and director of the new Peacock historical epic explain how they traveled back to the first century.
The new Peacock series Those About to Die is rooted in one of the most studied and dramatized historical eras ever: the age of Ancient Rome. Beginning in 79 AD, during the reign of Emperor Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins), the series depicts Rome at a crucial point in its history, a time when the empire's future is being determined by one potentially fractured dynasty, and when the city itself is celebrating the arrival of a new spectacle we now know as The Colosseum.
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Put simply, it's a massive show, with a story spanning numerous characters and depicting many different facets of Roman life in the first century. That means, of course, that a lot of work went into making the series as transportive for the viewer as possible. So, ahead of its premiere, NBC Insider sat down with some of the stars of the series, along with director/executive producer Roland Emmerich, to discuss how Ancient Rome came back to life in Those About to Die.
Rebuilding Ancient Rome for Those About to Die
It certainly helped for the cast and crew of Those About to Die that they were able to film in the actual city where their story is set. The production was based at the legendary Cinecittà Studios in Rome, which gave the creators of the show the chance to not just film in the Eternal City, but to immerse themselves in its history even as they told a fictionalized version of true events.
"We filmed the show in Rome, and you are surrounded by buildings built by these emperors," Jojo Macari, who plays Vespasian's son Domitian, said. "You are surrounded by their legacy constantly. So you can read as much as you want and you can do as much research as you like. But going and standing in Domitian's bedroom, which is still there on the Palatine Hill, nothing really compares to that."
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Of course, the production couldn't necessarily go and shoot in the actual bedrooms of Roman statesmen, so Ancient Rome had to be recreated through set design and visual effects. Among the tools at the production's disposal was a massive LED Volume screen, the same technology that's been used to great effect on series like The Mandalorian. For Emmerich, who's long been immersed in the world of visual effects-heavy productions, it was a new, and very exciting, experience.
"[It was the first time] I worked with it, and I fell in love with it" Emmerich said. "You can put something in the background which looks photo-real, and at the end, I shot 108 days on this stage. And I even sometimes said, 'No, let's shoot this on the Volume stage. Let's shoot this on the Volume stage,' because I got more and more excited about it."
Bringing Gladiator Battles in the Arena to Life
The Volume stage in Rome gave Those About to Die the chance to recreate things like the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum in all their ancient glory, but practical effects and practice were still very vital to the production. This was particularly true in the show's gladiatorial storyline, which follows a kidnapping Numidian hunter named Kwame (Moe Hashim) who's forced to fight for his life in the games.
While the arena they're fighting in might be a recreation, Hashim and fellow gladiator Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, who plays the Scandinavian fighter Viggo, had to learn to make the fights themselves look quite real.
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"The training was immense," Hashim said. "My first day in Rome was February, and the first day of me filming was in the end of March. So from February 'til March, I was just consistently training and learning the choreographs because there's quite a few fights that we have. But the best things about the choreography of the fight is that ... I fought how a North African animal hunter would fight, where, for example, Johannes would fight how his people, the Northman people would fight. So the stylistic [difference in] fights is what kind of made it realistic."
Jóhannesson added, "And props to the stunt team, because they really grinded us. I mean, they started as early as February, March. We were filming fighting stuff that we started working on in March in November. Every week you'd come in and brush up on it, and once you felt comfortable, they'd go, 'Great, now let's do it faster.' So always upping the ante."
How Those About to Die Recreated Roman Chariot Racing
The show's athletic realism wasn't just for the gladiators, though. A key element of Those About to Die is the power struggles over chariot races in Rome's Circus Maximus, and for Dimitri Leonidas, who plays celebrity charioteer Scorpus, that meant at a certain point, he actually had to drive a real chariot, pulled by real horses.
"Learning the several stages [of racing] before they let us get onto chariots and practice with the chariots was a lot of fun," Leonidas said. "And then finally when the stunt guys let us on the four-horse chariots to try and learn, the feeling is just incredible. There's nothing like it. Four giant Hungarian horses going all out. It's like riding an earthquake. It's hard to describe, to be honest. All I can say is those guys that do it, the stunt guys and then the guys like Scorpus who actually raced, you'd have to be insane. It's completely bonkers what they're doing."
Though he personally never took the horses to full speed while filming, Leonidas did note there's one key memory from the Those About to Die set that he'll always carry with him as a reminder of chariot racing's full power.
"I didn't go that fast except for one moment where we were sort of training and the horses decided they wanted to race and I just got dragged along," he said. "There's a great photo, actually, one of our set photographers took just as the horses went, and you can see me and one of the other actors just trying our best to stop them as we hit the turn on Circus Maximus. And he said to me that he stopped taking photos because he thought something bad was going to happen. To be fair, I was on the chariot and I thought something bad was going to happen. But that's why you do all that training. You have to just train as much as you can, hope that everything goes smoothly, but then trust that if something does go wrong, you know the protocols and you know how to make it safe."
He added, "But I'm glad I got to experience it because that was the only time really that I got to feel them go full pelt was when I wasn't expecting it. And it's wild. It's completely wild. And gave me a newfound sort of respect for Scorpus and all those guys that were doing it."
All 10, hour-long episodes of Those About to Die are now streaming on Peacock.
