Asked who she would have chosen if she had these three very different suitors in real life, Carey Mulligan chuckled as she quickly replied, "I probably would have gone for the guy with the baby lamb (Gabriel) in the first 20 minutes of the film."
The scene where Bathsheba tries to impress Gabriel and his friends by wading in to a sheep bath with them and the animals had little Hollywood glamour to it. Carey Mulligan said: "That was so much fun, although slightly disgusting by the end of the day. The sheep were doing their business in the water. The boys whinged constantly but they were wearing wetsuits under their costumes - I was wearing no wetsuit, so I was basically swimming in sheep s*** all day, which was a joy."
Carey Mulligan suggested Matthias Schoenaerts for the role of Gabriel Oak after having seen him in De rouille et d'os (2012). Mulligan told Total Film, "The minute I saw Rust and Bone I called [director] Thomas Vinterberg and I was like, 'That's who I want!'. He's brilliant - one of those effortlessly manly actors".
The song sung by Carey Mulligan and Michael Sheen in the film is "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme," a traditional British and Irish folk ballad.
Thomas Vinterberg claims that when first reading the script, he knew by the tenth page that Carey Mulligan was his only choice for Bathsheba Everdene.