Benedict Cumberbatch, Transition Completed

by Lynnette Porter

  In a humble acceptance speech - anathema to the glowing introduction by his friends and a brief clip reel illustrating his skill as an actor - Cumberbatch proclaimed that “Not only is my job a privilege, because I love it [and] the people I get to work with, the inspiring, inspiring people I get to work with, many whom are in front of me, and many who were on the screen behind me just now, and on stage with me”.[19] Cumberbatch interrupted himself with praise for Ejiofor and his work in 12 Years a Slave and disbelief that he, not Ejiofor, was named British Artist of the Year.

  Cumberbatch then thanked the crew for their work and attributed his ability to do his job well to the support provided by cast and crew members. More specifically, he thanked U.S. agent Billy Lazarus of UTA and U.K. agent John Grant of Conway, Van Gelder, and Grant - as well as, by name, their staff members. Finally, he expressed his gratitude to his sister, niece, and parents; he never fails to mention them during interviews or to somehow bring them into his work. Not surprisingly, Cumberbatch was most eloquent when talking about his family.

  Throughout 2014, the media continually referred to Cumberbatch’s star status. Headlines listed both him and movie icon Johnny Depp when discussing the Whitey Bulger movie. The media noted Elbow’s (and fans’) disappointment when Cumberbatch could not make a surprise appearance on stage with the band at the Glastonbury Festival because the gig conflicted with his filming schedule, but he still received a great deal of publicity when the media learned of the proposed appearance. He was one of the most popular celebrities at San Diego Comic-Con. Seemingly everyone wants Cumberbatch, and his schedule now is being planned more than a year in advance to accommodate his many projects. Not surprisingly, everything he does becomes the subject of media headlines.

  Whether he is steering his career into new territory, as producer or commentator, or building on the solid foundation of roles in television, film, radio, or theatre, Benedict Cumberbatch is no longer in the “transition” to stardom, with its international acclaim for his acting, an abundance of proffered roles, and the celebrity benefits and frustrations that accompany fame.

  As will be analysed in later chapters, 2013 may end up being the most important year of Cumberbatch’s professional life, as far as the number of projects and media fascination with them and him, but, even if it becomes only one of several key years in a long-term career in the public eye, 2013 will be seen as the year of Cumberbatch’s arrival as one of the most in-demand actors working today and the media’s and fandom’s crowning of him as the actor/celebrity to watch.

  1 James Mottram. “’It’s Not Like I’ve Completely Conquered Everything’: Benedict Cumberbatch Interview.” Independent. 4 Oct. 2013.

  2 Stephen Galloway. “The Confessions of Benedict Cumberbatch.” Hollywood Reporter. 20 Sep. 2013.

  3 Bill Condon. Toronto International Film Festival. 5 Sep. 2013.

  4 Scott Feinberg. “Toronto: Awards Prospects Limited for Fest Opener, The Fifth Estate (Analysis).” Hollywood Reporter. 5 Sep. 2013.

  5 Betsy Sharkey. “TIFF: A Bounty of Benedict Cumberbatch Performances.” Los Angeles Times. 10 Sep. 2013.

  6 Elanie Lui. “TIFF Party Report: Wait, What Do They Call Benedict Cumberbatch Superfans?” Globe and Mail. 6 Sep. 2013.

  7 CityNews Toronto. The Fifth Estate Red Carpet at TIFF. LiveStream. 5 Sep. 2013.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Ibid.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Bill Keveney. “Benedict Cumberbatch’s Very Big Year.”

  12 Ibid.

  13 Richard Horgan. “Benedict Cumberbatch Guarantees the BAFTA New York ‘Fun.’” MediaBistro. 11 Feb. 2014.

  14 BAFTA, New York. “In Conversation with Benedict Cumberbatch.” 20 Feb. 2014.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Colin Firth. “Benedict Cumberbatch.” Time. 27 Apr. 2014.

  17 BAFTA LA. “The Britannia Awards: Benedict Cumberbatch.” 4 Sep. 2013.

  18 Ibid.

  19 The BAFTA Los Angeles Jaguar Britannia Awards. BBC America. Dir. Russell Norman. 10 Nov. 2013.

  Chapter 2

  Star Trek’s Khan Games

  Khan: I am better.

  Kirk: At what?

  Khan: Everything.[20]

  Star Trek: Into Darkness

  Many critics and fans agree with Khan’s assessment - especially as it pertains to Cumberbatch’s performance as Khan in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek: Into Darkness.[21] After the first trailer featuring Cumberbatch arrived in cinemas in December 2012, one reviewer wrote that Cumberbatch’s “creepy voiceover and broody presence is the clear highlight of the short clip”. That was months before filmgoers witnessed not only Khan’s but Cumberbatch’s takeover of a summer blockbuster. In complimenting the actor on “doing a great job of establishing menace,” one critic suggested that the role might even take the actor to the Oscars.[22]

  Cumberbatch did land on stage at the 2014 Oscars, but as an award presenter and, at the end of the evening, cast member in Best Motion Picture winner 12 Years a Slave. Star Trek: Into Darkness certainly gained the actor a much larger global audience - and, more important, a mainstream audience of blockbuster-lovers worldwide, which helped lead to his becoming an Academy Awards presenter. Star Trek, however, is not the type of film that traditionally wins Oscars. When BAFTA or Academy Award season rolled around, Star Trek, while receiving kudos for technical achievements, unsurprisingly did not garner acting nominations. Sci-fi or fantasy movies do not tend to receive Oscars for acting or directing, or as best picture, no matter how much money they make at the box office or how much media attention they generate. (Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, with best picture and directing Oscars among its eleven, is a big exception in Academy history.)

  Khan did win Cumberbatch a nomination in the Best Villain category at the MTV Awards, but the actor lost to Mila Kunis, who portrayed the Wicked Witch in Oz the Great and Powerful.

  Of course, only hindsight will tell where Star Trek ultimately ranks in Cumberbatch’s list of career-changing films. It successfully showcased Cumberbatch (whose name takes up the width of the screen credits), but the role only received so much attention because Cumberbatch did his job well first.

  Even the first teaser trailer signalled a major shift in the way the film industry perceives Cumberbatch and tipped the scale toward his being recognised globally as a movie star. Its release in December 2012 was carefully timed to coincide with a peak movie-going time of year. The film’s first official publicity included a poster, media PR event in Tokyo, and nine-minute trailer distributed to select IMAX cinemas, many that, in the U.S., were showing The Hobbit. The addition of the trailer thus provided the actor with cross-promotion.

  In Japan in early December, Cumberbatch publicised Star Trek with Chris Pine (playing James T. Kirk). Paramount paired Cumberbatch - the lead villain generating most of the buzz about the next instalment of the Star Trek franchise - with the film’s and franchise’s de facto hero, Kirk.[23] The good guy-bad guy dichotomy made for intriguing speculation about the film, but it also marked the first time that Cumberbatch stood out from the rest of the cast in publicity. Cumberbatch was placed firmly in the spotlight as a Hollywood blockbuster star with this first Star Trek promotional junket.

  Another interesting shift in the media’s perception of Cumberbatch’s career occurred in December 2012. For the first time since becoming popular for playing Sherlock Holmes, the actor was identified as “Star Trek’s Cumberbatch” instead of the previously common “Sherlock’s Cumberbatch”. The shift was not lost on the actor’s management, who, according to Cumberbatch, “was just wetting themselves” when the early trailer generated immediate interest. On his way home from Japan, he stopped in Los Angeles and attended
the Children’s Defense Fund Beat the Odds gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. He told one reporter that his talent agency “were ringing me up and sending me emails. It’s really exciting”.[24]

  That Star Trek marked another level in his career was duly noted about a year earlier, when Cumberbatch was “pleased when I got the offer. But I know the second [Abrams’ Star Trek film] would become far-bigger scale, so I felt terror instantly”.[25] A year later, the actor began enjoying the results of his stellar performance and its appeal not only to audiences, which gained him fans within another genre (science fiction) and a broader international fanbase, but to Hollywood insiders who can see him as a bankable actor for much higher-profile films.

  Prominent media magazines such as U.K. film specialist Empire and U.S. pop culture favourite Entertainment Weekly featured Cumberbatch in his Star Trek role on the covers of February 2013 issues, months before the film’s release. That trend continued through the movie’s debut, with Cumberbatch’s Khan next to Pine’s Kirk or Zachary Quinto’s Spock on many magazine covers worldwide.

  During the first press interviews for this film, long before its release, the actor described his as-yet-unrevealed character as “very ruthless... not a clearly good or evil character. He is a villain but the actions he takes [have] intent and reason. He is a complicated character”.[26] Cumberbatch acknowledged that such characters are the hallmark of Abrams’ work, and he felt challenged as an actor to play the role.

  Once the film was released worldwide, Cumberbatch frequently was singled out for praise and for raising the level of acting among his colleagues. He was mobbed everywhere he went to promote the film during summer 2013, including in Japan in mid-July. At the Narita airport a casually dressed Cumberbatch seemed overwhelmed to see hundreds of fans awaiting his arrival, but he graciously thanked them.

  In contrast to his less formal attire, lack of makeup, and naturally tousled hair when he got off the plane in Japan, Cumberbatch’s “movie star” appearance generated plenty of international commentary when he later appeared for an interview on Japanese television. The actor’s heavy stage makeup and curls laden with product made some reporters question his “Hollywood” look.[27] Such a difference perhaps best exemplifies the shift between Cumberbatch being himself - or at least the public persona he chooses to present to his fans - and the “manufactured” look of a movie star. The dichotomy also illustrates the transitional phase between actor and celebrity/star, when the “real” and the “movie star” styles still can be easily differentiated.

  Cumberbatch’s high-profile role in Star Trek made a mainstream movie-going audience aware of him and his acting excellence in reinventing a classic sci-fi character. The actor proved his credibility as an action star, and, equally important, his Star Trek character contrasts his roles in dramatic films that made the rounds of festivals later that year. Star Trek became the first of a series of films released in 2013 that helped prove to even more critics and a broader international audience that Cumberbatch consistently conveys a watchable character and provides layers of characterisation, no matter the size of the role. When he is on screen, audiences automatically want to watch him.

  Courting Controversy with Khan

  The character-development and marketing history of director Abrams’ Star Trek: Into Darkness, the second movie in the rebooted franchise featuring a new, younger cast playing the iconic characters from “classic Trek,” the 1966-69 NBC television series, received nearly as much publicity as the film itself. In the script, Abrams exchanged “traditional” Khan for a new model of terrorist, then promoted (and had the cast obfuscate about the identity of) “John Harrison” as the villain, only to reveal that the character is indeed Khan. Although many fans suspected the real identity of “John Harrison” long before the film was released, the official word - to which Cumberbatch adhered - was that he played a character named Harrison.

  The controversy over the role Cumberbatch would play in the film and the resulting backlash against Into Darkness as a result of the “Khan games” Star Trek fans felt were perpetuated during filming had a surprising effect on Cumberbatch’s celebrity image as well as critics’ and audiences’ perception of him in this role.

  Initially, Benicio Del Toro seemed set to play the role but walked away apparently because of failed salary negotiations. A December 2011 article about Del Toro’s departure noted that fans would be “excited to see a new take on Khan, and Del Toro seemed oddly perfect for the role. With him out, Abrams has a lot of work to do in filling that character role, especially with Star Trek 2 scheduled to begin filming in a matter of weeks”.[28]

  During late-December holidays, Cumberbatch, with the aid of friends late one night, delivered an iPhone audition that won him the role.[29] While Cumberbatch fans celebrated the casting news, some Star Trek fans grumbled about the whitewashing of Khan, but others posted comments to ameliorate the discontent. One fan defended the casting choice as a matter of circumstance more than an intentional whitewash. After negotiations with Del Toro fell through,

  they were still looking for a Latino actor. But with such a short amount of time before the start of production, it seems it was difficult finding an available Indian or Latino actor... and they gave Benedict Cumberbatch the opportunity to audition. Apparently, he blew everyone away.[30]

  By choosing basically to remake Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan as Star Trek: Into Darkness and to reintroduce Khan as a key villain in his newly “re-imagined” Trek universe, Abrams decided both to court long-time fans by bringing back a favourite and to entice new audiences with a character who could be ruthless and fearsome but nuanced. Abrams planned not only to surprise audiences with Khan, but, with the casting of Cumberbatch, ultimately switched classic Asian Khan Noonien Singh with European Khan.

  What turned out to be surprising - and fortunate for Cumberbatch - was the lack of unified fan outrage against the shift in the character’s race or cultural background. Although some Star Trek fans have continued to criticise Cumberbatch’s casting, their ire was not directed toward the actor but an often-followed principal of casting white actors to play roles written for people of colour. Racebending.com raised the most objections on-line while admitting that Paramount’s Star Trek: Into Darkness was too big a movie to effectively boycott - too many fans waited too long to see it, and most of those fans likely are happy that the Enterprise crew includes men and women of colour in key roles, a holdover from Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future.

  To accompany the article discussing the white-washing of Khan, the website paired a photo of Cumberbatch with light hair from his time filming Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with a photo of dark-skinned Khan (as played by makeup-darkened Ricardo Montalban) in the Star Trek television episode, “Space Seed”. The site clearly stated its problem with Cumberbatch’s casting, especially in light of the secrecy about the character he would portray. The combination of secrecy and casting a white British actor as Khan turns

  what seems like a casting move that would typically be defended by cries of “best actor for the job, not racism” [into] something more cunning, more malicious. [It] creates intrigue around and interest in the role, but it also prevents advocacy groups... from building campaigns to protest the white-washing.[31]

  Nevertheless, this key change in the character seemed to be accepted by the majority of critics and fans. “New Khan,” like Enterprise crew members in Abrams’ reboot, had a new face, updated backstory, and plenty of action scenes designed to attract the next generation of the venerable franchise’s fans. Little dissent about Khan was actually heard once the film premiered; most critics found Cumberbatch very good in the role.

  The most effusive review of Cumberbatch’s performance (with a backhanded compliment to the film) was published in The Spectator, where cinema critic David Blackburn called the actor “brilliant” as Khan. He

  follows the Richard Burton School
of Acting in Trash and approaches the film as if it were serious. He delivers even the most cartoonish lines as if Christopher Marlowe had written them.... His baddie is a demonic über-warrior, a genetically modified hulk of testosterone and savagery.[32]

  This critic, who also provided yet another backhanded compliment to Cumberbatch as the actor behind such a fantastic villain, made a rather disparaging comparison between the performer’s on- and off-camera sound and manner. He noted that, in the role of Khan, Cumberbatch’s voice is much smoother and deeper than his natural “rasp”. Furthermore, although the actor may be “geeky” in real life, he knows how to turn himself into a superb villain.

  Through Khan, Abrams also repackaged a famous Star Trek character as another American movie-making stereotype, the British villain. Rising star Cumberbatch, with his classic British theatrical training and fame playing quintessential British literary icon Sherlock Holmes, faced the same fate as many a deep-voiced Brit before him - relegation as the embodiment of evil in an American film. Khan even became linked to London; Cumberbatch’s character bombs London before attacking San Francisco.

  From the get-go, however, Cumberbatch emphasised that his character is a new type of terrorist, “not your usual two-dimensional, cookie-cutter villain” that the actor said he hoped would make audiences “sympathise with the reasons for what he’s doing, not necessarily the means and the destruction he causes”.[33] Cumberbatch’s character was not meant to mimic Montalban’s, but to be more complex and more subtly acted.

  Khan: The Role

  The role Cumberbatch plays is vastly different from the one scripted for Montalban in the 1982 movie, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. That character seeks to avenge the death of his wife and beloved friends after being exiled by Kirk, then abandoned, on what becomes a barren planet. Khan’s motive is simple: revenge. He has a very personal grudge against Kirk. The superman, thanks to genetic engineering, awakened in cinemas in 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness has much more of a motivational problem; he becomes a terrorist working against the Federation, presumably because his crew is being held hostage, and sabotaging Starfleet is his best way to free his friends.