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Johannesburg – There’s a hot new show with an even hotter cast starting this Sunday, 30 November at 21:00 on BBC Entertainment (120).
The story of the Musketeers gets a makeover in the latest retelling of the classic story by Alexandre Dumas.
At the BBC Worldwide upfront they debuted the first episode of the award winning original BBC series and we also got to meet five of the lead characters of the show.
We got to chat to three of the cast members: Santiago Cabrera who plays Aramis, Howard Charles who plays Porthos and Maimie McCoy who plays Milady de Winter.
Channel24:
Do you have any input in how you want your character to evolve in the series?
Howard:
Definitely, collaboration is key. The writers and producers understand that this it is important. We are pretty much involved in everything, not at the beginning of it but once it gets to a certain point we are afforded time and opportunity to give feedback and express ideas. But we do that not just for ourselves but for each other too. There’s a lot of opportunity to play around with the best way to tell the story. Two heads are better than one. The producers respect that process, it’s very healthy and it facilitates ownership of the character.
Channel24:
How have you made your characters different from the original characters in the novel?
Maime:
The brilliant thing about having ten hours of television and then another ten hours in the second season is that you’ve got that time which you wouldn’t have in a two hour film to really introduce back story. Milady in the book is very different. She’s much more unrepentant and ruthless in the book. I think they and I wanted to introduce some of the reasons why she is like that and show elements of her fear and her griefs. She’s not really explored there and in the show I think that her character is rounded. It evolves over the series. She’s a great manipulator, you never quite know what is real and what’s not. You’ll get tiny little fragments of her story whether she’s telling the truth you don’t know. There’s a lovely thing at play there constantly playing and toying. I think there’s potential for her to have a huge journey. What makes the show good is that there is a real sense of realism and everyone has gone much more psychologically into the character and thrashed them out. Every character has layers and contradictions.
Channel24:
What kind of preparation did you do to play your individual characters? I read you went to Musketeer bootcamp, what was that like?
Santiago:
It was fantastic. We spent six days together three weeks before filming began. We then had an additional two more weeks to work on the horse riding. It was very necessary obviously for horse riding and sword fighting but the main quality was the camaraderie between us. Just to get the friendship. They are brothers they have each others back, they are loyal to each other. It’s a sort of unspoken kind of friendship where you imagine they are the type of people who don’t have to say much to each other or tell each other their problems, they just know they're there and they have each others backs. And for that it was really great to get to know ourselves really quickly and to go deep really quickly and then also the practical stuff, all the physical aspects of the action.
Howard:
It was priceless in terms of our connection. I can’t imagine what it would be like if we just turned up and went on to set. I remember on day one when we were shooting in the grave scenes we found these little moments which we would not have found if we didn’t have the bootcamp. Sweating and panting and bleeding it together was intense and it was like that from day one in bootcamp. You have to help each other get through and it becomes that kind of trust exercise. It was very special and it helped us bring a lot of that banter and camaraderie onto set.
Channel24:
How is this show different from everything else out there? Why should people watch it?
Santiago:
I think it’s the combination of being a classic story with a modern pace to it and I think it being heavy drama with high stakes but it also has humour, it doesn’t take itself too serious.
Channel24:
You’ve just completed filming the second series what can we look forward to?
Howard:
It’s more character driven because that’s what people enjoy from the first season. We go deeper and it’s fuller for everyone. The stakes are much higher for every character in the show and there’s drama and conflict and it’s a bit darker.
Check out the trailer here:
