RUSSELL CROWE – ‘My overall experience of Ireland in the summer was perfect’

Stephen Porzio

The Oscar-winner’s new movie The Pope’s Exorcist was shot in Dublin and Limerick.

Russell Crowe has described his time in Ireland last summer making his new horror movie The Pope’s Exorcist as “perfect”.

The film – which was shot in Dublin and Limerick – sees the Gladiator Oscar-winner play Father Gabriele Amorth, who was an Italian Catholic priest and served as the Chief Exorcist of the Vatican.

Before his death in 2016, he claimed to have performed tens of thousands of exorcisms throughout his life and was the subject of a 2017 documentary by William Friedkin, who also directed The Exorcist.

The Pope’s Exorcist is said to be inspired by Amorth’s actual files and will revolve around the priest as he investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession. His probe leads him to “uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden”.

When JOE interviewed Crowe for the movie, he was full of praise for the film crew he worked with in Ireland and revealed that he was in Dublin during last summer’s much-publicised heat wave. Recounting his experience, he told us:

“It’s a pretty spectacular city to work in when the sun’s out and I was living on the coast there. I’d ride my bicycle down to Bray.

“But we also shot in town. We shot in the town hall. We shot at Trinity College. We shot on the north side as well. We went down to Limerick and shot a few days down there.

“So, my overall experience of Ireland in the summer was perfect. It was a great combination of catching up with old friends, doing some work that I was really compelled by and meeting a whole lot of new people and having some new experiences.”

That said, having grown up in Australia and New Zealand, Crowe did find humour in what constitutes a heatwave in Ireland, stating:

“It was a point of great mirth to listen to a TV report saying that the next four days would be cresting 25 degrees so ‘look out, we’ve got a heatwave coming’.

“It’s autumn down here for example and the other day it was 33 degrees, so I suppose it depends on your experience.”