In Sony Pictures’ The Pope’s Exorcist, Academy Award-winner Russell Crowe portrays the real-life Chief Exorcist of the Vatican, Father Gabriele Amorth. During his interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Crowe reveals how the reality of the famed exorcist’s life experiences shook his foundations.

In the film, Father Amorth is assigned by the Pope himself (Franco Nero) to perform an exorcism on a young boy (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) in rural Spain. Amorth has dealt with a number of exorcisms throughout his time with the church, but most are sparked by psychosis rather than paranormal influence. However, this case demands Amorth engage in battle with true evil, with a centuries-old mystery to be solved at its core.
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If you’d like to learn more about The Pope’s Exorcist before its nationwide release on April 14th, check out Crowe’s full interview in the video above or give it a read in transcript form below. Not only does Crowe go into detail on what he learned about Father Amorth’s reported 60,000+ exorcisms, but he also takes a moment to share his thoughts on Ridley Scott’s highly anticipated Gladiator sequel.

Image via Sony

PERRI NEMIROFF: This movie is inspired by the real files of the character you play. Can you give us an example of something you read in those files or learned about Father Amorth’s true experience that made you think, “No way this is possible,” but the more you learned about him, the more you believed?

RUSSELL CROWE: The key thing for me on this was getting fascinated by him. I know it makes me seem very naive, but I had no idea there was a job called the Chief Exorcist of the Vatican. I was like, “Oh, okay.” [Laughs] I thought that was something that somebody had made up, and then I looked it up and realized it was real. And then just tracking back through Father Amorth’s life, it’s a fantastic journey. It’s a fascinating journey.

We allude to it a lot in the movie. There’s sequences where we go through his journey because you’re talking about a young boy who grows up in Modena in Italy, which is also where Ferrari comes from, which is why there’s a couple of Ferrari references; he wears red socks under his cassock and he has a Ferrari sticker on his Lambretta motor scooter. But, at the age of 17, he travels to Rome. He believes he’s had a calling to serve God. He gets to Rome, talks to priests, and the priest says, “You’re too young.” So basically he sends him back home; “Come back when you have more experience.”

So now you find this kid, he goes back to Modena, it’s 1942, the Second World War is raging, and this young man who believes he’s had a calling to serve God finds himself with a gun in his hand, and he’s shooting to kill. He goes through his war experiences, comes out of those war experiences, and goes into law school. Gets his law degree, then starts working as a journalist. He goes back to the same priest he’d seen a decade earlier and says, “I still have this calling,” and the priest this time says, “Well, that’s perfect because now you’ve lived some life and you’ve got something to teach.” So he goes into theology school, comes out of it, starts working with the Paulists, and that order is all about communication, so he produces radio, he produces television. He starts writing hundreds and hundreds of articles for intrachurch magazines.

And deep into his life, at the age of 60, he’s tapped on the shoulder by a priest he didn’t know very well called Father Candido. And Father Candido was the Chief Exorcist for the Vatican, and he says, “Gabriele, you have to take over from me.” It just came out of the blue for him. He had no association to that part of the church, but then [spent] 36 years as Chief Exorcist for the Vatican. Twelve books documenting his personal experiences.

I began to believe in Father Amorth through reading about his life experiences. So by extension, if he’s written it down in a book, he didn’t make it up. So, there it is.

Image via Sony

I’m gonna wind up going down that rabbit hole after this and reading some of that. I did it with The Conjuring movies and the Warrens, and it’s going to happen again here, I feel it.

CROWE: You’ve got to! You’ve got to! The first two books, if they don’t shake your foundations, nothing will. But it’s definitely worth looking into.

Speaking of shaking one’s foundations, there are actually qualities of Father Amorth’s that suggest the opposite. No matter how much darkness he encounters, he always has a lightheartedness and levity to him. Where do you think that ability comes from for him?

CROWE: The result of that deep dive that I did, it distilled down to two things for me. There’s a purity of his faith. His belief is unquestionable, right? You can see when people are with him, and they’ve talked about it. And look, I met colleagues of his, I met friends of his, I met a man who did 160 exorcisms with him, and the way they talk about Father Amorth, it’s not necessarily that he’s on a pedestal, but he’s certainly in his own rare air. They talked about him with a great deal of respect.

And you think about a man who has to constantly deal with afflicted people and the darkness that those people are going through, the darkness that their families are going through, and one thing that became really clear is he had this crazy sense of humor. These two things, right? The purity of faith and a sense of humor. If you’re facing that kind of darkness constantly on behalf of other people, if you’re the man reaching into somebody who’s in trouble trying to bring them to the light, then the purity of your faith and a sense of humor, that’s got to be the best sword and shield that you could have in terms of protecting yourself in that moment.

One of the things he talks about quite a lot in the books, he says the devil doesn’t have a sense of humor. The devil hates jokes. But the one thing that the devil looks for is the people who instead of jeering directly at the devil, jeer at the concept of a devil, because if they start to believe evil doesn’t exist, they’re the people that are available to evil, potentially.

Image via Sony

I have to look ahead a little because there are many out there that are really looking forward to the Gladiator sequel. I know you’re not in the movie, but is there anything specific you’re hoping to see in the new installment?

CROWE: I don’t really know where they’re gonna go with it. I’m sure that there’s been things on Ridley’s mind for the last 24 years that he thinks he can probably do better or something, you know? [Laughs] I think that’s one of the positives about it for sure that it is Ridley because he’s gonna want to go back into that world and create something the same level of spectacle as the first one. Look, the only thing that I really feel about it is slightly jealous because that was — you know, I was a much younger man obviously and it was a huge experience in my life, and it’s something that — it changed my life really. It changed the way people regarded me and what I do for a living, and I’ve been very lucky to be involved in lots of big movies, but the legs on that film are incredible. Here this is 2023 and we made that film in 1999, I guarantee you somewhere around the world tonight Gladiator is going to be showing on primetime TV, and you don’t always get that kind of longevity with every film you do so it obviously holds a special place in my heart.

The Pope’s Exorcist is in theaters on April 14th.