Marc Warren wouldn’t ride a horse while filming ‘Beecham House’ because he is scared of the animals – so show bosses had to enlist a holidaymaker to take his place for such scenes.
The 52-year-old actor is so frightened of the equines he couldn’t bear to gallop through parts of India on a four-legged beast in the period drama – which is set in 1795 and has been dubbed ‘Delhi Downton’ – but he did manage to get on top of a horse for a quick sitting-only scene.
Speaking to BANG Showbiz and other media, he said: "That’s not me on the horse. I have been on horses but I’m scared of horses.
"There’s one shot of me on a horse, but there’s a guy holding the horse, but because it’s from the front you couldn’t tell."
As a result, show bosses ended up hiring a backpacker from Belgium to take Marc’s place for a scene which saw his character Samuel Parker thundering through Delhi on horseback. .
Marc said: "He looked really good though, that guy. He’s was a traveller."
‘Beecham House’ creator Gurinder Chadha added: "He’s actually from Belgium, Marc’s lookalike on the horse.
"Marc did say, when I first offered him the part, ‘About this moment where he says Samuel thunders through on horseback.’ He said he didn’t do horses, and not ‘thundering through’."
The ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ director admitted it was "very hard" to fly over English extras for the series, so show bosses had to scour the streets of India searching for British holidaymakers to take on the bit-part roles.
She added: "Filming in Jaipur, it was very hard to get English extras. We didn’t want to fly English extras out.
"So what you do end up with on a drama like this is you do go round looking for tourists or people on holiday.
"We kept bumping into them in different places and it was like, ‘Oh, there’s our soldier.’ "
Marc Warren rejected Beecham House ride due to horse fear
