Those About to Die Mixes Gladiators With the Underworld of the Roman Empire

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

“You see what that is?” Those About to Die writer Robert Rodat asks, angling his Zoom window towards a portrait on the wall of his New Hampshire home. It’s a painting of men in horse-drawn chariots racing across a dusty track. 

“Circus Maximus,” Rodat says. “I bought that thing for like five bucks—I can’t even guess how many decades ago—at a yard sale. I’ve had a super-longstanding interest in the late [Roman] Republic. If I told you how many books I’ve read about it, you’d say I’m insane or a liar.” 

Peacock gladiator series Those About to Die isn’t exactly about the late Roman Republic but it’s close enough for Rodat’s tastes. Like another swords-and-sandals project of note (Ridley Scott’s 2000 film Gladiator), Those About to Die is loosely inspired by Daniel P. Mannix’s 1958 book of the same name about the nitty gritty details of gladiatorial entertainment in Rome. The 10-episode series takes place amid the beginnings of the Roman Empire and the establishment of the Flavian dynasty. Anthony Hopkins stars as notable Roman Emperor Vespasian. 

“Vespasian had the same challenges that Caesar had,” Rodat says. “He had to make a choice between being a soldier and being a politician. We live in a society now in which ambition runs roughshod over community and commonality, but the stakes were even higher then.”

The stakes are indeed high on Those About to Die. The show spends time with both the decision-makers at the capitol and the lower class subjected to combat, chariot races, and other amusements for the benefit of the wealthy. Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones) leads the charge of the underclass as the bookie and relentless social climber Tenax. But there are even more unfortunate souls, including Cala (Sara Martins), who is trying to retrieve her children who were brought to Rome in the bondage of slavery.

“In the world of Tenax, when we’re dealing with lower-level crime stuff, we have Cala, who will grow and assert her powers in a way that’s not available to the upper class,” Rodat says. “It was important to the people in the room that we not be anachronistic. And that we showed people who were disadvantaged or at the lower end of the power scale asserting themselves in ways that were realistic for the period.”

The prevailing image from Mannix’s Those About to Die that helped best encapsulate the series for Rodat and producers Roland Emmerich, Gianni Nunnari, and Harald Kloser was that of the thriving underclass beneath Rome’s premier entertainment venue. 

“Circus Maximus sat 250,000 people. And 35,000 people lived and worked in the underbelly underneath the stands,” Rodat says. “Fenway Park in Boston holds 35,000 people. That’s how many people worked in the betting parlors and the brothels and the stables.”

Notably, Those About to Die will premiere on July 18 on Peacock, just a week before the NBCUniversal streaming service became the exclusive online home for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris. While the Olympics will (hopefully) be far less bloody than the contests observed on Those About to Die, the series still comments on our modern entertainment appetites in more ways than one, as Rodat explains. 

“There’s a thing that happens in Hollywood when you pitch a historical piece and say, ‘Well yes, it’s set in this historical period but it’s really about today, honestly.’ Everybody nods and says, ‘Yeah, bullshit.’ But the early empire period really does have so many allegorical connections to today, it’s incredible. You have polarization of wealth, crushing immigration issues, gender issues, political battles on either side, the constant threat of civil war. Those connections ring out and they did for all of us.” 

All 10 episodes of Those About to Die premiere Thursday, July 18 on Peacock in the US, and on Friday, July 19 on Prime Video in the UK.