Benedict Cumberbatch

by Justin Lewis

  Then in May, there were the BAFTA Television Awards Best Actor, for which Cumberbatch was up against Jim Broadbent (Any Human Heart), Daniel Rigby (Eric Morecambe in Eric and Ernie) and Doctor Who, aka Matt Smith. Sherlock itself was shortlisted for Best Drama, while Martin Freeman was in the running for Best Supporting Actor. Though again, Cumberbatch missed out on the top prize (Rigby won), both the show itself and Freeman collected gongs on the night itself, which coincidentally took place on Conan Doyle’s birthday: 22 May.

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  The fanbase for Sherlock and Cumberbatch now extended to Russia and the Far East. He had to become used to the attention of the public, which had suddenly grown extremely devoted. After giving his all each evening in theatrical productions like After the Dance and Frankenstein, an exhausted Cumberbatch would face excitable Sherlock fans outside the stage door. ‘I had done a long day and I said, “I don’t wish to be rude…”, and they said, “We’ve come all the way from South Korea”. People came from Russia, Japan… everywhere.’

  It was on a visit to Japan where he found himself the centre of attention to a bewildering degree. ‘I was mobbed at the airport. There were a few people who were interested to talk to me about everything to do with my life at the moment, and to let me know that I’m very big on the Internet, which I have sort of got wind of.’

  The level of devotion, then, bordered on surreal. ‘It’s strange to have that sort of intimacy from strangers when it’s all through your work. A lot of “I know you don’t know me but I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you” stuff, which is odd.’ But there was a humorous side to this idolatry. Take, for instance, a page of lookey-likey pictures he was sent by a fan: ‘Sid from Ice Age, a horse, a llama, a hammerhead shark and a meerkat’.

  Between the broadcast of series one of Sherlock, and the making of the second batch in 2011, Benedict Cumberbatch had been busy with plenty of other work, including the filming of War Horse and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so it felt peculiar returning to do it again. He was unused to making television series – all his previous ones had been single series, and it was only on radio in Cabin Pressure where he had become accustomed to several series of something. Even if the public were only just getting used to it, would he already feel like it would be more of the same?

  ‘When I went back it felt like a pale impression,’ he admitted. ‘It felt like I was impersonating something I’d seen on the telly last year. It now had this life that was completely outside what we had done before in front of a camera. We had been part of the audience, and the audience reaction to it, for a lot longer than we had actually been playing the roles.’ Or was it just that he didn’t like revisiting the Holmes hair? ‘I was short and blond in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I really didn’t like coming back to this hair. I can’t think of a wittier or even accurate comparison, but I just think it makes me look a bit like… a woman.’

  One development in series two would be the way that Holmes’ icy analysis would start to thaw and gain a little humanity. ‘His methods are devilish,’ said Cumberbatch, ‘but he’s got good at the core.’ But Holmes’ ultra-observant working methods would remain. ‘You see extraordinary depth in the smallest detail. It’s joining the dots. That’s the fun thing, building a narrative. You do try to piece together personal stories from bits of information.’

  The three episodes in Sherlock’s second series would be ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’ and ‘The Reichenbach Fall’. ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ was a reworking of the very first Conan Doyle short story about Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia. It picks up from where ‘The Great Game’ left off, with Holmes and Watson escaping the clutches of Moriarty, and finds the monarchy’s reputation threatened by incriminating photographs. Soon the occupants of 221b are up against terrorists and a government conspiracy.

  The source material for the second story, ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’, is – of course – from The Hound of the Baskervilles, the third of the Holmes novels, and probably the best-known of them all. Sherlock Holmes is asked to investigate the presence of a supernatural hound on the moors of Devon which has been terrorising nearby residents, especially one aristocratic family. When Charles Baskerville dies, there are fresh fears that the hound is still at large. Instead of centring the story round a country house (as in the original), it was set around a sinister research base specialising in animal experimentation.

  The third story, ‘The Reichenbach Fall’, was a rebooting of the 1893 story, The Final Problem. The original tale included the notorious battle on a ledge at the Reichenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps, which sent Holmes falling to his apparent death, and was indeed intended by Conan Doyle to bid farewell to Sherlock. The author had wanted to go back to writing fiction of a more ‘serious’ nature. But although he had intended to kill off Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem, overwhelming public demand over several years made him rethink this decision, and he was finally persuaded to resurrect him in The Adventure of the Empty House in 1903.

  In fact, Conan Doyle could be quite scornful about the popularity of Sherlock Holmes. In 1923, he bemoaned: ‘If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.’ Sometimes Conan Doyle could neglect the plots of Sherlock stories and not even finish them properly. ‘The readers would often be waiting and waiting,’ said Mark Gatiss, who with Steven Moffat had little choice but to create proper endings to some of Conan Doyle’s originals, ‘and suddenly we were destined never to find out why the murderer did it, because the ship they were on sank in a storm. Basically, someone comes round and says to Conan Doyle, “Do you want to come out?” And he says, “Hang on, I’ll just finish this and I’ll be with you in five minutes.”’

  For the remake of The Final Problem, ‘The Reichenbach Fall’ would find Professor Moriarty making a return to break into the Tower of London, Pentonville Prison and the Bank of England, puzzling everyone as to how he was able to do it. But the climactic confrontation between him and Holmes would take place not in Switzerland but on the roof of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. The rooftop scenes were some of the earliest to be shot for the new series, and it wasn’t long before snaps of Cumberbatch made it into the press – pictures of Sherlock apparently being taken to hospital after falling off the roof. But did he jump, or was he pushed by James Moriarty?

  Moffat and Gatiss had decided to give Moriarty the psyche of a suicide bomber, reasoning that he had no particular ambition to survive his dastardly deeds unharmed. ‘The villains that chill us are the ones who aren’t compromised by the need to survive,’ said Moffat. ‘People whose eyes you look at and there’s no sign of anything human.’

  Although all three stories in series two were loosely based on Conan Doyle originals, various motifs and themes were dropped in from some of his other works. ‘Almost all of the stories are not long enough,’ said Moffat, by way of explanation. ‘We did “The Great Game” and that’s adapted from about 28 Sherlock Holmes stories.’ But then, Sherlock was less about the intricate and cunning plotting (as intricate and cunning as it could be) than about the characters in those stories. ‘The engine of the plot has to be the adventures,’ said Mark Gatiss, ‘but what people really love is the banter and the rows, and the proper feeling between them, which really leaps off the screen.’

  As in the first series, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Stephen Thompson would write one story adaptation each. Thompson’s previous series as a writer included the BBC legal drama Silk and Doctor Who. Between them, the three would tackle a trio of ‘big stories’ from the Conan Doyle canon. They could have delayed these until later in the run, but chose not to. ‘Knowing we were a huge hit, instead of making people wait years and years,’ said Moffat, ‘we thought, “To hell with deferred pleasure, let’s just do it now – more, sooner, faster. That also means we see three different sides to Sherlock.’ Meaning ‘Sherlock and love’, ‘Sherlock and fear’ and �
�Sherlock and death’.

  The filming schedule ran smoothly until early August 2011, when unforeseen events forced the production to close ranks. As riots broke out in streets in and around London and other cities, gangs of looters began trying to vandalise the set, attempted to steal scaffolding poles, and at one point picked up some rigging to attack an old pump engine. Production was shut down temporarily, and Mark Gatiss sent the following message on Twitter: ‘Scene incomplete owing to approaching looters. Unbelievable times.’

  Cumberbatch was upset by the attacks in general, and watched the news coverage on TV with growing alarm and anger. He was left in no doubt as to the motives of many of those involved. ‘I’m a Prince of Wales Trust ambassador, so I’m all about giving youth an education, a voice and a chance not to take the wrong road. But those eejits saying they’re doing it for socio-political reasons? Fuck off, no you’re not, you’re on a jolly and you’re getting away with it!’

  He knew all too well that an outburst such as this was likely to be met with some ridicule. ‘I come from an incredibly privileged bubble, so the minute I open my mouth I can sense the comeback of “What the fuck do you know?” But my sympathy is with the people who do know what they’re talking about, who have been brought up on estates and live morally decent, contributing lives and who have seen opportunists destroying all their work.’

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  One of the most talked-about cast additions for Sherlock’s second series was Lara Pulver, previously Section Chief Erin Watts in Spooks. She played Holmes’ love interest, Irene Adler. ‘Irene and Sherlock just get each other to the core,’ said Laura Pulver. ‘They are so similar and so different on so many different levels. What was great was just pushing each other’s buttons and seeing what exploded.’

  Irene is a dominatrix with the very same capability as Holmes of making ingenious analytical leaps and participating in mind games. ‘She doesn’t suffer fools gladly,’ Cumberbatch told the Guardian. ‘He [Holmes] has a blind spot which is female emotional intuition. He’s very good at guessing the kind of everyday circumstances in the sexes, the normal nuances of courtship. What she has is much more complicated than that.’

  So this would be no conventional love story, but two complex people who have a similar worldview. Or as Martin Freeman pithily put it, ‘Holmes happens to be falling in love with someone who is as insane as he is!’

  One scene between Sherlock and Irene in ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ would be much-discussed: he underwent a whipping from her. ‘It was really painful, Lara went for it,’ Cumberbatch told the Sun. ‘I don’t know how people get pleasure out of that kind of thing, I genuinely don’t.’ For her part, Pulver quipped that she was only doing what he asked her to do. ‘Benedict said, “It’s all right, Lara, you can hit me harder. I was like, “Oh can I now, Benedict Cumberbatch?”’

  The whipping scenes were not the most controversial in the episode, however. For her opening scene as Irene, barely two minutes long, Pulver was naked. ‘When I read that script, I didn’t even flinch,’ she said later. ‘It was just a moment in the storytelling. For it to have become such a focus of that episode kind of shocks me. It is naive to think it wouldn’t be mentioned, and yet it still shocks me.’

  ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, which opened the second series of Sherlock, was broadcast at 8.10pm on New Year’s Day 2011. British television operated a policy that nine o’clock marked a watershed in terms of content. Anything before then purported to be ‘family viewing’; anything after that time was skewed towards a more adult audience. Around 100 viewers (out of nearly 10 million) contacted the BBC to complain about the first Pulver scene. ‘That was ludicrous,’ she commented. ‘You saw more of Benedict when his sheet fell down than you did of me.’ ‘It’s not supposed to be a source of stimulation for the audience,’ argued Cumberbatch, who pointed out the counter-support for the scene.

  Ultimately, it was all great publicity for the series, and as the BBC observed, pre-watershed should not mean anodyne. ‘We had lots of conversations about it,’ said drama head Ben Stephenson, ‘and I think we were right in thinking it’s a bit of a cheeky show.’ In fact, ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ proved to be the most popular single programme in the history of the BBC’s online catch-up service, the iPlayer. Over 2.5 million people watched it when it was made available, beating a Doctor Who episode from 2010.

  But would Steven Moffat really kill off Sherlock Holmes after just six instalments of the programme? No one seemed to be giving anything away. ‘[He] is not afraid of controversy,’ conceded the BBC. ‘Nobody would put it past him to kill off Sherlock as it would be a dramatic twist.’ The ultimate in dramatic twists, in fact. Moffat shrugged off the idea of it being beyond the pale: ‘Robin Hood died. Sherlock Holmes had a famous death. This is our version of the story and we can do what we like.’

  The second series had won round doubters of the previous one. One Radio Times senior writer had dismissed the first series as ‘beautifully crafted but hollow’. Barely 18 months later, the same journalist branded it ‘a grown-up drama for people like us. And you can’t say that very often. The script is literate, witty and clever, full of lines that sing out with intelligence.’ It was quite clear that Sherlock was a unanimous TV smash hit, and Benedict Cumberbatch was a star.

  CHAPTER 11

  PUBLIC CUMBERBATCH

  After 2004, when he had starred as the young Stephen Hawking, Benedict Cumberbatch steadily became increasingly well-known, but remained able to carry on his day-to-day life as normal. Rarely was he snapped by the paparazzi or approached by members of the public. ‘I don’t get spotted,’ he said in 2007, ‘Maybe a girl will stop me in the street and ask: “Did I snog you at my cousin’s wedding?”, but that’s it.’

  The first series of Sherlock, in July and August 2010, changed all that. At thirty-four, he had suddenly become very famous indeed. He later described the trajectory as ‘a horrific fairground ride’. Yet even before this, he was perceptive about how fame can distort one’s perception of the world. Having become accustomed to preparing for acting roles by observing society around him, it was going to be tough to continue with this when he himself was going to be the centre of attention. And he was also now almost too busy to ponder and reflect. ‘One of the fears of having too much work is not having time to observe. And once you get recognised, there is nowhere for you to look any more. You can’t sit on a night bus and watch it all happen,’ he explained. ‘There are ways of not being recognised, of course, but planning is essential. Existing in the public space with any kind of private dimension is a fun game to play. That involves hats and glasses and just trying to keep a low profile in an Inspector Clouseau disguise.’

  Success had brought financial stability, although some anxiety lingered about those of his contemporaries who had not secured the breaks in the way he had. ‘When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you have this innate sense of guilt that it’s not fair that others aren’t doing exactly what you’re doing. It’s soul-destroying. There is a kind of weird guilt about doing well.’

  Had he become a household name at the right moment? He couldn’t be certain. ‘If I’d had fame early on,’ he told the Guardian, ‘I’d have been able to abuse it in the way that a young man should. I’ve been working to this, but a lot of the fruits of it I can’t really enjoy.’ Faced with an intense level of adoration, it was still scrutiny. How would he cope in the circumstances? A big worry came with the group of people who would refer to him by the name of his most famous role. ‘You get known as “Sherlock”. That’s not just from people who can’t be bothered to remember “Benedict Cumberbatch”, and who can blame them, because it’s such a strong signature.’ But then again, to his relief, it wasn’t as if George Clooney was called by his ER character name ‘Doug Ross’ anymore.

  Cumberbatch was starting to get used to TV appearances under the character name ‘Himself’: chat shows, breakfast TV, entertainment juggernauts like Alan Carr: Chatty Ma
n, The Jonathan Ross Show and The Graham Norton Show, perched on a sofa next to the likes of Kerry Katona, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and even Harrison Ford. 2010, though, was when the tabloid newspapers became interested in Benedict Cumberbatch. To them, he was not merely a successful and highly acclaimed actor, he was a celebrity. He was there not just to talk about his various films and TV shows, but to be photographed, and maybe to discuss his personal life.

  He had always had a wry way in interviews, and was prone to being playful. Television and radio interviews would usually demonstrate an irony in the voice if he made a joke, but the face-value style of the tabloids could never quite do justice to this patter on the page. One of his first experiences of having a joke decontextualised came at the Sherlock press launch. ‘I’m always cast as sort of slightly wan, ethereal, troubled intellectuals or physically ambivalent bad lovers. I’m here to tell you I’m quite the opposite in real life. I’m a fucking fantastic lover!’ The remark would follow him around, much to his chagrin. ‘That got everywhere,’ he groaned only weeks later. ‘Everyone was coming up to me, going, “So, how good are you, exactly?” Jesus Christ…’ Mostly, he would politely distance himself from the idea that he was a sex symbol. ‘People see a value in you that you don’t see yourself. So when I’m told of my sex-symbol status and all that nonsense I find it laughable, silly. I’ve been looking at this same old mush all my life.’

  He was flattered by his devoted female fanbase, but was also careful. A Twitter account called @Cumberbitches had started up, sharing information and gossip about the object of its desire. As of September 2013, 60,000 fans had signed up. He felt uncomfortable with the account name, and opted instead for ‘Cumberbabes’, and eventually ‘Cumberwomen’ and ‘Cumbergirls’. ‘It’s not even politeness. I won’t allow you to be my bitches. I think it sets feminism back so many notches. You are… Cumberpeople.’