The classic movie “The Exorcist” and its famous split pea soup are iconic, but in “The Pope’s Exorcist,” starring Russell Crowe, a demonic child isn’t even the only surprise, and don’t you also wake up some mornings feeling like Satan has possessed you?
We all know Russell Crowe can put on a show, but no one can truly possess a character quite like … Satan.
And in “The Pope’s Exorcist,” Father Gabriele Amorth investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession but ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden.
Alex Miranda: “Watching this film, I mean, it is so twisted. I was curious, when you first saw the film back, all special effects in…”
Russell Crowe: “When you do a film like this, where you’re screaming prayers at non-existent demos, it’s a revelation, haha, when you get to see the film.”
It may be the Oscar-winning actor’s most bizzare role yet.
Alex Miranda: “This man is a real man. This job is a real job. That blew my mind.”
Russell Crowe: “I started to kind of form a kind of affection for him based on two things, really: I could see that the reason he was so effective in his job comes down to the purity of his faith and his sense of humor.”
He’d probably need one, you know, to lighten his mood, and talk about an odd job.
Russell Crowe: “I didn’t know that there was a job called the Chief Exorcist of the Vatican. I didn’t know that, you know? So I thought, oh, is that something they made up? And I looked into it, and realized that they hadn’t made it up.”
But exorcisms — psst, those were only one of his hobbies.
Russell Crowe: “He produced radio, he produced television, and wrote magazine articles for church magazines, but prior to that, he was a lawyer, and prior to that, he was a resistance fighter.”
Which probably came in handy when, as he claims, the holy man performed more 100,000 exorcisms in his lifetime.
Russell Crowe: “Regardless of what my perspective is, here is a man who literally wrote hundreds of articles and 12 books about his direct first-person experiences, so you have to take that for what it is.”
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