At last night's Nanny McPhee premiere, Empire managed to quash their Mr Darcy blushes for long enough to find out what Colin Firth and onscreen son Thomas Sangster were up to next, only to find that both are filming Doug Lefler's debut feature, The Last Legion, in Slovakia.
Sangster coolly deflected Empire's questioning saying: "I can’t say too much but it’s about Ancient Rome. I play Caesar and Colin is kind of like my bodyguard I suppose." Sangster 1, Empire nil.
Luckily for this news piece, Colin Firth proved to be a little more loose-lipped on the subject, and The Last Legion sounds like it's a good leap away from the cosy comedy of Nanny: "This is fighting off Saxons and Goths and the menaces of the ancient world," said People magazine's Hottest Man Alive. "It’s an adventure story and I think it has an intimacy about it because, unlike a lot of these things with massive battles, it’s a group of stragglers, about seven people trying to survive and you get to know each other very well under those circumstances.
The film is adapted from the novel by renowned historical writer Valerio Manfredi. Sangster, who played the eldest of Firth's brood in Nanny McPhee, stars as Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of Rome, who flees the city to Britain to track down a group of supporters while Firth's character Aurelius follows him to keep him out of harm's way.
"We’re in a bit of a father and son role there as well really," says Firth. "It’s Ancient Rome you see, so I’m appointed to guard this last, child emperor at the moment where the whole thing collapses. Apparently this is true, that the Goths, when they finally did sack Rome, spared the life of the Emperor because he was so young. We don’t know any more, but the writer just supposed, 'Well, what about the guy who was sworn to protect him? Is he going to carry on protecting him even though he’s not the Emperor any more?' It’s about that kind of relationship."