You don’t turn down an invite to meet Benedict Cumberbatch. Ever. So, earlier this month I packed my bags and flew to Hong Kong to meet the 40-year-old actor. Benedict was in Hong Kong on the first leg of the promotional tour for his big superhero film Doctor Strange. The film, directed by Scott Derrickson, tells the story of fantastic neurosurgeon Stephen Strange, who thinks his career and life are in tatters after a horrific accident leaves him without the use of his hands. He travels to a mysterious mountain community to meet The Ancient One (played by Tilda Swinton) where he learns supernatural powers that can bend time and space.
On three different occasions over a two-day period, I listened to Benedict talk about everything from his travels in India to his one-year-old son and, of course, Doctor Strange. Here are the excerpts.
Was it ever a dream of yours to play a superhero?
No, it’s not something that I harboured an ambition for. But I can tell you now that I have played it I am glad to have had the opportunity. The thrill of first putting a costume on in fitting, to the end of the shoot when we were in the streets of New York where I am pretending to fly… yeah you get an infectious, giddy grin like a kid. Like it’s Halloween or a birthday party where you are dressing up as your favourite character.
I have enjoyed being in the audience. The first superhero film I saw was Tim Burton’s Batman and I was hooked from that point. Marvel has taken the genre to another level. But it’s nothing that I dreamt of playing, but now that I have I am very very glad I did.
What was your first reaction when they invited you to play Doctor Strange?
It was incredibly flattering. The studio had to shift heaven and earth in their schedule to accommodate my schedule to play this role. So you have the responsibility to live up to the promise they have shown in you. That was a great motivation.
What was your approach to the role of Doctor Strange?
My approach is no different from any other role. There are different demands when you are doing a film on this scale. Whether it is the hours or the amount of live action that’s involved. Despite the extraordinary effects you’ll see in the film a lot of it was done in person on the most fantastic sets where you could literally shoot 360 degrees. The action was done with stuntmen but also with us on wires and running… a lot of running. The physical side of things was a new step up for me.
When you are in a very big film, you can’t think about that or what the preconceptions will be. You just problem solve moment-by-moment. We had wonderful source material in the script. Kevin and Scott are wonderful collaborators and there’s a collegiate feel to their collaboration. So, you approach the material like any other material. You find out what your character’s intentions are, where you are in the story and what you are shooting for the day. So, it was no different from any other role except maybe a lot more running around and physicality.
Doctor Strange like Sherlock, Alan Turin, Assange is a brainiac. Do these characters call out to you?
The only cross-section between all of these characters is that they are clever. Unlike Sherlock, Doctor Strange is not a sociopath, he lives in the real world, and has a sexual and material appetite. He is far more human than Sherlock. His arrogance is the same as anyone who is at the top of his profession. He is not as difficult or bumpy as Sherlock. His can’t see that his shortsighted-ness has led him into a life with a dead end and he sees the accident as the end of life as he knew it. His journey is about realising the true power of the mind to change your reality. I would never want to play a character like Sherlock in another form.
What were the fun and the hard parts of playing Doctor Strange?
For me, the fun is the hard-ness. He goes on the most extraordinary character journey. This man is a part of a very material, logic-driven, binary world, something that we experience every day. He is at the head of his profession. He is a very smart but arrogant neuronsurgeon. He has his entire world turned upside down, both physically and mentally after a car crash. He has healing in his hands but he used it for his own good. What he discovers when he meets the Ancient One is that the great power he has is something within and goes beyond our world.
There are countless different stages to him. At the beginning you meet the confident man, there is the broken man after the accident and there is a slow rebuild into a Marvel superhero. While that was hard (laughs), it was the most enjoyable ride I have been on. This is a thrilling universe to be a part of and hopefully that’s the experience the audience will have.
Age: 40
Superpowers: Voice, vocabulary, diction, humour and a sharp mind
Geek credentials: Plays the titular Sherlock in BBC’s Sherlock, was the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit Trilogy, played Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness
Also known for: The Imitation Game (2014), August: Osage County (2013), 12 Years A Slave (2013), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Black Mass (2015), Fifth Estate (2013), Atonement (2007)
Oscar nominations: 1, for The Imitation Game
‘Strange’ powers: A magician who draws power from mystical entities to cast spells. He also wields mystical artefacts like the Cloak of Levitation, the Eye of Agamotto, the Book of the Vishanti and the Orb of Agamotto. He is trained in martial arts and is proficient with weapons like swords and axes
What kind of superpower would you like to have?
I would love to be able to fly… that would be magical. I got to do a bit of that in this film which was wonderful. But I would like to do it without the harness and the heavy cloak.
What are you memories of shooting this film?
My baby was a great distraction. He was a soothing influence of the day. All these people running on four hours of sleep and a lot of caffeine went (drops his jaw). He has that effect (laughs). I spend a large part of the shoot in a mechanical arm which was quite fun. I was literally thrown around by this arm as a part of one of these extraordinary journeys he goes on. The mechanical arm is supposed to be the arm of the Ancient One. Some of the wire work I have done in the film was like testing out a fairground ride. I couldn’t believe that I was being paid to do it. The harness is not easy to be in but the feeling of being airborne and gymnastics and the speed of the movement was really thrilling. My abiding memory is just laughing a lot when the cameras weren’t rolling and on occasion when they were.
You share quite a few similarities with Robert Downey Jr. You both play superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You’ve both played Sherlock and your characters have dated Rachel McAdams. Have you ever had a chance to talk to him about this?
We had a giggle when we first met. This was before I was cast in Doctor Strange. He is such a lovely man. We met a couple of times on the awards circuit when The Imitation Game was up and he was here with The Judge. What a great guy. I really hope that we get some time to play off each other… his Tony Stark.
You have travelled extensively around India. What are you memories of the country?
I have very fond memories of my trip in India. We took a train from Delhi across the northern plain… through Varanasi where we stopped for a couple of days. It was extraordinary to be that near the process of living and dying with the burning ghat with people washing in the same river. The streets awash with human and animal traffic…. The cows and temples. We shot in a burning ghat in Kathmandu (for Doctor Strange) and that brought back a very instant memory of that very potent time in Varanasi. We had a wonderful time in Darjeeling (where he taught in a monastery for a few months). What an incredible country.
At the end of my tenure as a teacher, I spent a month travelling around Rajasthan. We went to Udaipur, Jaisalmer and Pushkar. I have very special memories of India. I haven’t been back for a period of time. I went to Bombay and Calcutta as it was then and Delhi… the three major cities. I still look at those photographs and it takes me straight back. They were the proper photographs that you took on cameras that needed to be wound so some of them are blurry now. It was a long time ago.
Karishma Upadhyay
Benedict Cumberbatch is the perfect Doctor Strange because... Tell t2@abp.in
