Simeon Morris: rhino-saddler to the stars

2023 was a big year for Simeon Morris. How big has only just become apparent.

“I got to make the rhino harness for Gladiator 2. Now the film is out, I’m allowed to talk about it,” he said. The movie was released a couple of months ago, on 15 November.

This would be the highlight of any year for most of us. But in 2023 Simeon also took a one-man show to the Edinburgh Fringe and won a Fringe First award. He’s like a walking news story.

“It all happened because I left drama school in 2022 and fell into a bit of a funk. I was feeling sort of depressed and lacklustre. So I applied to go to the Fringe and then got offered the work on Gladiator at the same time: January 2023. Then I sunk all the money from the movie into the show.”

Even so, his is hardly an average portfolio career in the creative industries. Before becoming a professional actor at 50 Simeon, who is from Elm Hill in Norwich - and Tasburgh - was a leather worker and designer of women’s clothes.

His thoughtful, thought-provoking one-man show, called Square Peg, was - brass tacks - about the impact on him of something that his father had said about women: that they were better than men. The show toured to the Norwich Arts Centre at the end of last year, an occasion he says was "like a school reunion". (He went to the Hewett.)

The team he joined to do the saddlery for Gladiator 2 was working from a hangar on Fairoaks airfield near Chobham down in Surrey, he says, within striking distance of Pinewood and Shepperton studios. “They were already in full swing when I got there.

“I made the harness and my boss Shelley supervised and did the saddle, which is a real work of art,” said Simeon. “The saddlery department was set up in Itasca Studios just to make Roman-era saddles. And then we were also asked to saddle a rhinoceros.” As you do. 

And this is the amazing thing really: the part that made my jaw drop. Because before I had even seen the film, pretty much the only thing that I knew about Gladiator 2 was that it had an armoured rhino in it. (Oh… and Paul Mescal.) How cool is that?

“Yeah. The rhino had a bit in its mouth and all the other stuff that you would have for a horse. There was a full-size model of a rhinoceros to work from. And I think the harness is now in Ridley Scott – the director’s – private collection,” said Simeon.

“The idea of saddling a rhinoceros is probably not historically accurate but who knows? I did a little bit of reading around and there were a lot of different wild animals that made an appearance in the Colosseum and other Roman amphitheatres. 

“It’s possible there was a fighting rhino. But there doesn’t seem to be an actual record of it. It’s very contentious. Some people say there is a record… and then other people say that the record in question wasn’t written until hundreds of years after it supposedly happened – so it’s probably not true.

 “There were definitely lions in the arenas but you wouldn’t want to put a saddle on one.”

Even a model of a rhino must be quite charismatic though? “It was made out of silicone and rubber: the size of a real rhino but pink and initially with no head or tail. It was an animatronic and by the time we had finished it had a huge cast-iron bit in its mouth that weighed 15 kilos. We had to attach a rein to it. But the motors in animatronics can’t lift weights and the model broke as soon as we tried to fit it. So the whole thing had to be taken apart to be mended.”

Painstaking work then?

“The pieces of leather in the harness were 6mm thick with backings that were 15mm - and when you put it all together it weighed a tonne. Probably literally. Trying to punch a needle through it on the sewing machine was incredibly difficult. There were three of us on the machine and the other two were really burly lads! But in the end we made it in a couple of weeks. I had to cut out a pattern and then make a shape out of cardboard. The saddle was made out of wood and foam, and then covered in leather.”

So when did you see your work on screen?

“I got to go to the cast and crew screening back in early November at Cineworld in Leicester Square. There were hundreds of people there who had all worked on it and Ridley Scott and Paul Mescal came out at the beginning and spoke to us. The director claimed not to know which screening it was: I guess they were doing several. He asked: who are you guys? And someone shouted back ‘Crew’.

“To be honest, before I saw it I thought it was going to be awful, that the rhino was going to be a sort of fantasy element. But I was pleasantly surprised by how well the rhinoceros worked. It was exciting that it was in the first trailer that came out and that everyone knows about it. It’s really amazing to be able to point to it on a poster and say ‘That’s my work.’ It’s still really exciting. That scene in particular was way better than I thought it would be’.”

I think it’s going to be remembered. So are there other rhino-harnessing opportunities in the offing?

“I should really put it on my CV, shouldn’t I?” Ha! Rhino-saddler to the stars. “Seriously though, the film and TV industry in this country is on its knees right now. It hasn’t really recovered from the writers’ strike in the US [back in 2023] and there’s been a massive downturn in advertising and production. 

“I had a look at some statistics and whereas there was something like 125 separate productions going on here in 2022, in 2024 there were only 28. That means that everyone from behind the scenes is taking a massive hit. There are thousands of people unemployed. I’ve done a couple of bits and pieces recently, including some gun holsters for a TV show. But I have to admit that my biggest issue work-wise is that I have a massive fear of starting my own business and then having to do the same thing over and over again.”

Not much danger of that then. 

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