“The Raven” is out today. It stars John Cusack, playing legendary poet Edgar Allan Poe, but it is not his true story. It’s an imagined murder mystery that Poe gets swept into. Luke Evans plays Detective Fields, a character that never actually existed.

So, we asked Luke how do you prepare to play a fictional role in a movie partially based on real people and history? Luke told us: “There’s a lot of reading to be done, even if you are playing a fictional character you can reference so much historical information about them. It was so much fun to do, the crew and the cast were so lovely.”