Richelieu was a great statesman, and like all great statesman, he was a very ruthless man. He's not cruel. He just does what he has to do. And in his own mind, he's absolutely right.

Richelieu was a great statesman, and like all great statesman, he was a very ruthless man. He's not cruel. He just does what he has to do. And in his own mind, he's absolutely right.

The situation that women were in, at the time, was something that Dumas doesn't really go into, but it's a great subject to look at. It's a great genre because you can do a lot. Sometimes in thrillers, you can really explore things, and it's the same in this genre.

On a simple level, you need directors who are good at action and can choreograph an action scene, but you need them to also have that sense of fun and that sense of movement and that ability to get the actors to really respond to the material in the way that you want them to. It's a very big thing.

The thing about villains is that villains always have their own logic, and they don't necessarily see themselves as villains. Richelieu is not a villain, in his own mind. He's doing what he needs to do.

It's not fundamentally different to any other genre, that action is a particular thing. Being able to do action sounds like it should be straightforward, but it really isn't. I always want the action to be witty. I don't want it to be merely routine.

I think there's an element in Milady where she sees her own innocence in D'Artagnan. In the very beginning, she's using him in a pretty cynical way. When she gets to know him, she sees qualities in him that she recognizes and it's almost like trying to remake the past, but of course, it doesn't work.