3musk Luke Evans & Ray Stevenson 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. Look out for more in-depth interviews closer to the films release date.

The individual members of the Musketeers each have their own distinguishing characteristics…
Ray Stevenson: Definitely. I play Porthos. In this version we had a bit of license where we could create a back-story for our characters. I was looking at paintings from the period, and I liked the fact that in certain paintings people actually had their hair cut, it wasn’t just the waving locks we traditionally think of. I started thinking, ‘Maybe he’s not from Paris, maybe he’s from Marseille, he’s had a bit more of a naughty nautical past, he’s been on a ship before, he’s travelled a bit.’ Because Porthos has a different fighting style, he’s got a different way of dressing, he’s got a different attitude to life. But at heart he’s got that certain DNA that makes him a Musketeer.

Luke Evans: Aramis, he was a priest, then he became a Musketeer. He’s very religious, he’s often reading the Bible, using his Rosary, he prays for all of his victims – the people he kills in battle. He’s quite a studios, quiet creature. But when he fights he’s very agile, that’s how we’ve created Aramis to be very different to the other two Musketeers. I remember Paul W.S. Anderson saying to me, ‘He’s gonna fight like Jason Bourne,’ (laughs). It’s great, I got to use wirework, I was jumping off things, flying through the air, landing on Gondolas, doing things that only somebody who was very agile and cat-like could do. He’s always in black, he’s very priestly, he doesn’t wear the priest garb, but there’s signs he was priestly – he always wears a cross. He’s quite modest in his look, even though it isn’t very modest at all (laughs), its very intricate and beautiful. He’s a loyal soul, a very good friend. In the books he never betrays anybody, he’s one of the only Musketeers who never betrays anyone, he’ll do anything for his friends, he’s a very loyal soul. I tried to bring that into this character, in this film.

The film is very much a coming of age story, with D’Artagnan.
Luke Evans: Yeah, basically it’s a right of passage story, about a young boy who has his sights set on big things. He gets knock back, he falls in love, he realises he has to make big decisions. He grows an awful lot – we all grow a lot in the film. What’s nice about the Musketeers, the original three, they get to watch D’Artagnan experience and grow during the film. We see ourselves in him I guess, we like his spirit. Somehow D’Artagnan revives our spirit in camaraderie, the brotherhood, pride in who we were – which D’Artagnan always had, it kept him going, his Dad was a musketeer and he always wanted to be one. So when he came to Paris to find us, we’re a bit like, ‘We’ve had our day, we’re not shining anymore, we’re a little bit dull.’ And D’Artagnan comes along and wakes us all back up.

Ray Stevenson: I liken the Three Musketeers to a bit like Venice, their glory days are definitely behind them. It all got a bit decayed, a bit broken down, there’s only this small handful left. Then there’s this young lad D’Artagnan who’s Father was a Musketeer, who’s out into the world to seek his life, seek adventures, to live. He finds them, they’ve still got that thing but its been a long time since they’ve been called upon, politics has changed, changed the state of France. Richelieu is basically ruling France from behind the throne of a young King, King Louis.

There have been a number of movies based on The Three Musketeers story, what do you think
sets this one apart?
Ray Stevenson: I think with our movie, the fact that the Musketeers have been done almost every ten or fifteen years, it’s like there’s a new Musketeers for each generation. And hopefully this one is going to be this generations Musketeers. I think it’s especially poignant the fact that we’re back in Babelsberg, that we were in Germany, we shot in places that have never been shot before. We are showing places that have never been on screen before, that we had access to – it’s very rich. And we shot in 3D, very much our generations state-of-the-art newest technology. At Babelsberg Studios in Berlin, that’s where they shot ‘Metropolis,‘ which in its day was this state-of-the-art, height of technology film. Its kind of completing a circle. Hopefully it provides this generation with this great tale of adventure.

Luke Evans: It’s a new take on the story. It’s like Shakespeare, you’ve seen Shakespeare over and over again, but you never see the same performance. I guess that is what’s important about this story – it’s a brilliant story and it has lasted a very long-time, and it deserves to be told again. What’s brilliant about this is that we’re bringing 21st century technology to a 400 year old story.

The film features a tonne of very elaborate action sequences….
Luke Evans: We do a lot of fighting, there’s a lot of Cardinals guards that get annihilated by the Musketeers (laughs). We fly on airships, we get blasted by canons, I fly through the air and land on an enemies airship. It goes on and on and on (laughs), we use the airship to blow up of the Duke of Buckingham’s Tower of London. I mean, it’s one amazing scene after another (laughs), to shoot it was really really great. There was very complex fight choreography, we worked on huge sets, the designs on this film are of a huge size. It’s one fight drama after another, great great fun.