Coleman told the studio not to list her in the credits. But some still held her responsible for the film's inauthenticity. That is a foreign feeling to a scholar. But Franzoni, who also produced the film, says that logistical problems at times hindered their precision. When we got in full swing of production there were script problems and we were rewriting.
Most historians have an agenda and are willing to bend the facts to make the agenda work.
So it's not just filmakers. Coleman saw three versions of the script, but emphasizes that the last version she saw only somewhat resembled the eventual film. Franzoni, whose wife found Coleman while watching a Learning Channel documentary on original Roman gladiators, says he recognizes where the film went wrong. We were trying to get the overall picture correct. Coleman says the film's producers prioritized the glamour of the film over its historical accuracy.