Starring Logan Lerman, Matthew Macfadyen, Ray Stevenson, Luke ...

done before and he probably wouldn't be interested in doing again. And then one day I
came up with the idea of casting him as the Duke of Buckingham, one of the bad guys of
the movie. And we went to go and have a cup of tea with Orlando in London and I talked
to him about it and he loved it. Because he felt this is exactly what he had wanted to do
for a long time was to break away from the kind of good guys that he’d been playing in
Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean and really let his inner bad guy out. And
he did it with great aplomb. I mean, he really went for it.”
Says Bolt, “Paul and I love to cast against type and Orlando is seen here playing an
antihero – the cunning and caddish Duke of Buckingham. You are going to expect a
goody goody, but you are going to get an extremely roguish, cunning baddy. I think we
are the first to do that with Orlando.
Bloom describes his character: “The Duke of Buckingham was the wealthiest courtier of
his King’s reign and he behaves like a big spoiled brat. He is like a peacock that loves to
show himself off. When Paul and I were discussing the role, he was telling me to think
about the cool rock-stars of our time: David Bowie, Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger –
Buckingham is like a rock star. This is not a Musketeer movie the audience is going to
expect because it doesn’t take itself seriously. There is so much joy, humor and wit in this
piece. Buckingham comes in, has these great moments where he stirs it up with all the
key characters and then leaves again. It has been a lot of fun.”
“Orlando was very engaged with the movie. He loved the role he was playing. He loved
the costumes he was wearing. I think when you make a period movie, and you have
costumes as extravagant as the kind that Orlando wears, I think there’s a great danger
that the costumes end up wearing the actor. But the costume should just become an
extension of his character. And I think Orlando thought about that a lot and he embodied
that when we were shooting the movie,” says Anderson.
Milla Jovovich has been a fan of the Dumas stories since childhood. She explains her
attraction to the time-honored role of Milady De Winter. “For me, The Three Musketeers
is the classic, action packed, fun book that you can’t stop reading once you’ve started.
Dumas was a fantastic writer, every chapter leaves you hanging, wanting to know what
happens next.
“I was involved from the very beginning when Paul [Anderson] started working with
Andrew Davies to write the script for the movie. Milady is one of my favorite characters in
historical literature. I was just so happy that Paul was going in a different direction with
his filmmaking and that I could potentially have the chance to play such an iconic
character.”
“Milla is an incredible history buff,” says Anderson. “I’ve never met anyone who kind of
knows more about European history. She reads all the time. She was very interested
even long before I started talking about doing The Three Musketeers, in the whole time
I've known her, she’s been very interested in period etiquette and she’s read books about
that and about the royal court. And of course she’s a fashion designer. So she knew all
about the dresses. This was a period that she was fascinated with. And had a lot of kind
of passion and knowledge to bring to that role.”
Jovovich talks about Milady as a character and how she embodies the qualities of a
strong, independent woman of today. “I have always looked at Milady as one of the most
modern women in literature. She is single, incredibly smart and able to go in and out of
different societies effortlessly. It takes a very strong and clever woman to be able to
navigate in a man’s world, especially in the 17 th century when a woman could be sent
away to a nunnery or an asylum for speaking back to her husband. To be a woman that
is smart enough to manipulate these men is a great accomplishment.”
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