Russell Crowe's kids are on to something.
During his virtual visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the Australian actor revealed that his teenage sons Charles and Tennyson have been social distancing in Sydney while he's been in the bush, adding that his kids had a hilarious reason for choosing The Emerald City.
"I was talking with my boys—and they kept the schools open here for quite a while, so there was a bit of confusion there about where people were going to go an all that," he told host Jimmy Fallon. "And then, at the end of the day, my kids decided to isolate in Sydney. I was a little affronted because it's the bush. We got the wide-open spaces. We got all of these amazing things up here."
"But they were like, ‘No, no, dad, we've made the decision that in a pandemic, we're going to isolate in the most populous part of the country surrounded by the areas that have the most infections,'" Crowe continued. "And I'm like, ‘Guys, can I ask why?' And my youngest one, who is just too honest, said, ‘Uber Eats.'"
Switching gears, the duo also discussed Crowe's role in 2000's Gladiator, which he revealed he almost passed up because the original script was "so bad."
"See, Gladiator is a unique experience because the script that they had was so bad. It was just so bad, you know? It was like, ‘Okay?'" he recalled. "But, you know, the producer didn't know I'd actually already been able to get a copy, but the thing he said was, ‘I don't want to send you the document we have because you won't respond to it.'"
The Les Miserables star continued, "'But I want to encourage you to have a meeting with [director] Ridley Scott and here's the thing that I want you to think about: It's 180 A.D., you're a Roman general and you're being directed by Ridley Scott. Just think about that.'"
Fallon also highlighted Australia's South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby team's decision to kneel during their game last week in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Crowe, who co-owns the NRL team, backed the players' statement and shared how it also relates back to Australia's "negative colonial history."
"You know, within Australian culture, there's, of course, Australian aboriginals and also many Maori people from New Zealand and other nations like Samoa and Tonga and Papua New Guinea," The Loudest Voice star explained. "And, you know, the player base for the game of rugby league definitely has a majority of Black players. And as a club, we just asked them if they wanted to make their own statement and so they took it upon themselves and they talked to their opponents on the Gold Coast Titans and they also talked to the referees."
"So, before that particular round started, the entire squad—both squads and the referees and any administrative staff and stuff that were there in the stadium…they all took a knee together," Crowe continued. "And you know, that was just a gesture of support from across the other side of the world. And the great thing about it was right across the board…there was 100% agreement that that's what we should be doing to offer support."
He added, "But also to bring light to certain issues that are prevalent in Australia. We have a really negative colonial history of how we treated the indigenous culture that was here when the English first arrived to settle the place. So, there's a lot of those things that are public knowledge and are discussed at certain points that just need to be fully addressed."
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)