Sam Claflin on ignoring The Count of Monte Cristo director's strict instructions

"The director [Bille August] strictly prohibited me from watching any previous renditions and told me not to read the book — he said he wanted our script to be the bible, basically. But I disobeyed those orders, and took myself away and watched a couple of the other versions, and read the book. It's very thick and dense! Back when it was released, there was no television, and no real possibility for people to travel, so there'll be a description of a bicycle in the corner that's like three pages long, and has nothing to do with the plot, but it's just setting the scene. But I'd never read it before, or seen any previous interpretation, so in a sense, our version of the story was my introduction — I knew it was about revenge, but that was about it."

"Edmond is very wronged, and spends nearly 20 years plotting his revenge! You can tell he's obviously a very disciplined, very traumatised man who gets blindsided by hate and anger and rage, and learns to control it enough not to lash out. He's very patient, very cunning, sly and clever — these are all things that sort of come to him during his time in prison being led astray by Abbé Faria!

"It's one of the most interesting characters I've ever played — the whole story is him pretending to be someone else, and as an actor, pretending to be someone else pretending to be someone else was a bit of a head-spin throughout, but there was a lot of fun to be had with that. There are private moments in the latter parts of the series where I would question the director like, 'is he still the Count here, or is he Edmond now that there's no one else around?' and he said, 'now we can let Edmond creep out' — so the anger burning in his eyes comes out and see the hint of emotion, but as soon as someone enters the room he just goes back to this stoic, kind of robotic state. It was a lot of fun, and very challenging - balancing on that beam and kind of dipping my toe in each of the waters!"

"It's a dream role as an actor, I would say. I think they are very few and far between — you definitely get some great roles, but especially in film, you don't have the opportunity to explore it fully, you might be able to just sort of touch on the surface. You might, as an actor, have prepared all your backstory and know where your character is going, what his intentions are and who he is, but the audience don't always see that, and they might make their own interpretations in watching the film.

"But there's something quite wonderful in playing this type of character over eight hours — you get to see him before, during and after the trauma, and I think that's what makes our particular production kind of unique in its retelling, that kind of depth."

"Yesterday I was watching this clip of a podcast, where they were talking about Christoph Waltz on a chat show after filming Inglourious Basterds [in which Waltz played SS officer Hans Landa]. Someone asked him, 'how does it feel getting into the role of an evil man?' and he was like, 'he doesn't think he's evil, he thinks he's a good man and that what the Nazi party is doing is a good thing for the world — he truly believes what he is doing is the right thing'.

"I think with Edmond it's kind of similar — he's likeable, because the audience hopefully understand why he is acting the way he is later in the series, and quite honestly going too far a lot of the time. He pushes everyone away, just to get his revenge. That's why it's such an interesting story, because he is a likeable person but he does things that are frankly heinous. But we all love an antihero, like Tommy Shelby from Peaky Blinders or Walter White from Breaking Bad — there's a darkness in all of us, and I think we like to be able to have that escape, watching someone else go through darker things than we're capable of, because it allows us to go 'do you know what? I'm not that bad!'"

"We shot everything out of order — we shot the Count stuff first, so the sort of robotic, focused, disciplined, moody, broody kind of characteristics crept out during that period, and I think by the time we finished that I was so emotionally exhausted from refraining from emoting that by the time Jeremy came in like the theatrical, eccentric human being that is, and brought so much energy to the scenes, it kind of gave me a new lease of life in the way that Edmond in that moment of the story is suddenly given hope.

"But yeah, going through the rigorous process of getting the wig put on, and individually laying each hair — it wasn't a beard piece, they laid each individual hair on one by one, so it took hours and hours! So by the time I'd get on set I'd be exhausted, but then Jeremy would arrive and I'd be like, 'OK, yeah! We're going again!' All those parts of the process aided me in the performance because Edmond is exhausted and weak, but then you see your friend and you're like, 'we're gonna get through this!' I honestly loved working alongside Jeremy — he's a legend and an idol of mine from years and years, so it was a dream come true to be in close proximity with a star like that."

"I'd say the storm sequence was one of the most difficult days of filming I've ever done in my life! It was a very cold day and we had a lot to get through, and they had rain machines on as well as wind machines, so we were all drenched, and you'd have the wind blasting the side of your face to the point where you couldn't hear anyone. I remember Blake [Ritson], who plays Danglars, and I having a sequence where we were screaming at each other over the helm, and not being able to hear a word — I just had to wait until his mouth stopped moving and then I was like, 'OK, I think it's my line!' Obviously we did all the dialogue in ADR, and the lines that they scripted were not the lines that were said in the end. So they were like, 'what were you saying?' and I was going, 'I don't remember, I was just trying to survive!' But there's still an element of being a kid, pretending to drown and being on a pirate ship — I just love my job, I really do! Even on the hardest days, it's still a joy."

"For me, what's at the heart of this is that there's no point living in hate, it will eat you up from the inside. Abbé Faria has a line, which I'm probably going to butcher now: 'if you're going to seek revenge, you need to dig your own grave first' — like, you will kill yourself by doing this, everything that you know, love and believe about the world is going to die if you go down this path, and I think that's so true and so relevant to today. Seeing how much of the world is at war and in disagreement one another, forgiveness is key and that will always be relevant — that will always be a life lesson that needs to be heard across the world."