Sam Claflin is done playing the hero.
After starring in films like “Me Before You,” “The Hunger Games” and “Enola Holmes” — and earning a Golden Globe nod for his work on the miniseries “Daisy Jones & the Six” — the star has taken on the most challenging role of his 15-year career, playing Edmond Dantès in PBS Masterpiece’s “The Count of Monte Cristo” series adaptation.
And he’s explicit in his conviction: Don’t be like Dantès! Based on the 1844 classic from Alexandre Dumas, the eight-episode period drama follows Dantès as he’s betrayed by a cabal of conspirators, then dedicates his life to exacting calculated, brutal revenge, at great personal cost.
Claflin plays naive young man turned vengeful spirit Edmond Dantés in “The Count of Monte Cristo.” PBS
“This shouldn’t be a love letter to revenge. If anything, it should dissuade you from wanting to exact revenge on wrongdoings. It’s about forgiveness,” Claflin, who’s also an executive producer on the project, tells Page Six Hollywood.
“It consumes him. When the plot begins, it’s, ‘I’m doing this for love.’ But even though the love is still there and available, he’s got such tunnel vision that he loses the capacity to love, and he loses everything. He isolates himself to such a degree that he’ll never be happy.”
While the 2002 Jim Caviezel-led film adaptation delights in Dantès’ increasingly unhinged acts of retribution, (“very swashbuckling,” Claflin says with a laugh), this new interpretation has a more spiritual approach.
So what’s Claflin’s take? “I’ve never believed in God, necessarily. I wouldn’t say that I believe that there is a man in the sky who chooses what prayers to answer. But I do believe in energy. And I believe in Mother Nature,” he muses.
“I found spirituality to be something that I’m really, really drawn to, and I think has helped me get through the past year and a half of difficulties. There’s part of me that believes that – I’m quoting books now – God is within us. God is love,” he adds, citing Marianne Williamson’s “A Return to Love.”
“This shouldn’t be a love letter to revenge. If anything, it should dissuade you from wanting to exact revenge on wrongdoings. It’s about forgiveness,” Claflin says of “The Count of Monte Cristo.” PBS
While the “Peaky Blinders” alum says the role was far more demanding mentally than physically, he recalls one particularly challenging — and wet — day on set, and how the dedicated crew kept him safe.
“There was a sequence where I was in a tank in Malta, and it was the one day that it was freezing cold. I almost got hypothermia,” he told us. “I was shivering because I was just standing in the cold pool for a long period of time, and my body just hadn’t acclimatized. They looked after me, and I remember getting back to the hotel, and there was already a bath run.”