The Musketeers star Maimie McCoy has admitted viewers may hate her - but she doesn't care.

The actress plays assassin Milady de Winter in the new BBC drama based on The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. She works for villain Cardinal Richelieu, played by Peter Capaldi, and used to be married to Musketeer Athos, played by Tom Burke.

Maimie revealed: "She's pretty ferocious as a woman and incredibly complicated which is the interesting thing. Her actions are incredibly vengeful and evil - she's not particularly nice. I desperately wanted to jump into her skin and work out why she was doing what she does.

"Some people will hate me. I hope some people relish in what I get up to as well.

"It's serious but there's also a sense of fun to it. There's a wickedness there.

"I suppose what you wan to find is a character's vulnerability and Achilles' heel, which I think we've got with the Athos storyline. So I think if they get a sense of that they'll maybe understand her. They still might not like her but that's fine - I don't care."

Tom Burke is joined by Luke Pasqualino, Santiago Cabrera and Howard Charles as the rest of the musketeers in the series - written and produced by Adrian Hodges, who co-created Primeval and wrote the screenplay for My Week With Marilyn. Hugo Speer also stars as Captain Treville.

:: The Musketeers begins on BBC One tonight (January 19).