Luke Pasqualino as D'Artagnan
Luke Pasqualino found 'The Musketeers' tough because he had to learn how to sword fight.
The 23-year-old actor plays D'Artagnan in the new BBC One period drama which is based on Alexandre Dumas' novel 'The Three Musketeers'.
Luke and his co-stars Tom Burke, Howard Charles and Santiago Cabrera - who play The Three Musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis - had to undergo a boot camp to learn how to handle swords, ride horses and fire guns before shooting started in Prague and Luke admits he found the blade skills difficult to master.
Luke said: "I think for me personally I found the sword fighting a lot harder than the horse riding at the start ... I think I speak for the rest of the boys as well... We were all sweating at first and we did find it very hard but it was something we certainly grew immune to. The hard work from the boot camp until the day we were finishing rehearsing and the sword fights hurt your hand a lot of the time."
Howard believes the hard work the main cast had to put in before filming began and the time they spent together was key to building good relationships between them and developing the camaraderie the characters are famous for.
He said: "We got there and we were assigned a marshal. He made it very clear, very quickly that we had to work which we pleased about because that's why we were over there but literally from the first second of the first session we were panting and sweating and egos were out the window and there was immense respect between all four of us.
"I think the camaraderie and the connection and the closeness was amazing. We were cleaning out the stables, getting our hands dirty to put it mildly, going on horse back, sword fighting, yoga - not sure you could call it yoga the way we were doing it - but we got a lot fitter very, very quickly."
'The Musketeers' also stars new 'Doctor Who' actor Peter Capaldi as villain Cardinal Richelieu, Tamla Kari as Constance Bonacieux and Maimie McCoy as Milady de Winter and the first episode airs on BBC One on Sunday evening (19.01.14).
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