Orlando Bloom & Matthew Macfadyen Interview For ‘The Three Musketeers’

Orlando Bloom & Matthew Macfadyen Interview For ‘The Three Musketeers’


“One-for-all and all-for-one.” The hot-headed young D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) joins forces with three rogue Musketeers (Matthew Macfadyen, Luke Evans and Ray Stevenson) in this reboot of Alexandre Dumas’ classic story ‘The Three Musketeers.’ They must stop the evil Richlieu (Christoph Waltz) and face off with Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) and the treacherous Milady (Milla Jovovich). Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson’s, the action adventure is given a state of the art update in 3-D. The film also stars Mads Mikkelson, Gabriella Wilde, Freddie Fox, James Corden and Juno Temple. ‘The Three Musketeers’ is released in cinemas October 12th in the UK, and October 21st in the US. Check out what Orlando Bloom and Matthew Macfadyen had to say about the film below.

The Duke of Buckingham is a right rascal, I can imagine he was a tonne of fun to play?

Orlando Bloom: Absolutely! One of the things that attracted me to this project was that I kind of get to be a caddish, rakish, rogue. Buckingham is not the arch-enemy, he’s more of a rascal – that’s a lot of fun to play. He’s a protagonist so he really keys off of Cardinal Richelieu and M’lady De Winter. He was the wealthiest courtier of his Kings reign, he’s kind of like a big spoilt brat. The script read like a really fantastic, contemporary action adventure movie, but its set in the period, its gonna be a great crowd pleaser. He was a lot of fun.

Your costume and look as the Duke of Buckingham stands out, that must help a lot when your playing this type of character.

Orlando Bloom: We had a great rehearsal period, I had already sort of done some work on the character – the voice, the movement, the dialect, the physicality, all of that stuff. And then I got into my costume and found that that was doing most of it for me (laughs). So it was like, ‘Don’t make a mess of it!’ Because when you have costumes like I had on this film, the only thing you have to make sure you don’t do is ruin it – the costume is doing most of the work. I had a lot of fun with the hair, beard, whole wardrobe.


What role does Athos play in ‘The Three Musketeers’?

Matthew Macfadyen: Athos and M’lady De Winter, played by Milla Jovovich, were lovers before she betrays him very cruelly quite early in the story. I think in the books originally he’s the oldest of the Musketeers, he looks on D’Artagnan as a bit of a son, there’s a father/son thing going on. That’s not strictly true in this adaptation, but there’s bits of that. The Three Musketeers are the Kings guards, they’re elite soldiers, the three heroes are great friends and they’ve had a lot of history together. They’ve been on forty two or forty three missions together so they’re very close, there’s a true true bond between them. .

There’s a great number of fight sequences and stunning locations in the film, what was that like for you?

Matthew Macfadyen: The fighting was great (laughs). When my agent rang and said they’re making a film on ‘The Three Musketeers’ I just started laughing – it’s one of those dream jobs. The fighting was great, our first ten days of filming we shot a huge fight with forty stunt men in a big square in Bamberg, Bavaria. The fighting was great.

We shot in the Residenz in Munich, which I think is the first, and probably the last time anyone’s allowed to film in there (laughs). It was endless location after location, beautiful, just beautiful locations. My favourite one was this big country house in which the family that own it only use it every summer. It was the Venetian safe-house, it was three hundred years old, shells on the walls, lots of mirrors – it was very beautiful.

What do you think was Paul W.S. Anderson’s motivation to make this film?

Orlando Bloom: He was saying that since he had his daughter she had really influenced his career, and how he felt that she had been a big part of the reason of doing this movie. Because the romance and heroism of this movie, I think that’s something that he knew would really speak to his daughter. Since he’s been raising her, it’s been something that’s also started appealing to him. I thought that was a really good reason to make a movie like this.