Benedict Cumberbatch, Transition Completed

by Lynnette Porter

  6. He learns from A-list actors with more Hollywood experience.

  Although Cumberbatch undoubtedly learns from and studies his colleagues’ work every time he acts, his smaller roles within a large ensemble cast grant him the chance to work with A-list actors with whom he had not previously performed. When Clooney gave Cumberbatch career advice at the BAFTA Britannia Awards, Cumberbatch listened and learned. When the actor worked with Meryl Streep, he asked about her process. When Cumberbatch worked with Gary Oldman, who has become a mentor, the older actor not only talked up his younger co-star’s talent but wanted to work more with him. Although Cumberbatch already knows a great deal, he is open to learning from his colleagues who are more experienced in Hollywood.

  7. He receives more personal publicity when he helps promote major motion pictures.

  More people get to see him and know him through television appearances, streamed interviews from red carpets, entertainment news, and media panels when he has a role in “big” movies, especially those hyped by Hollywood. With a film in which Cumberbatch played a larger role, such as Smaug in The Hobbit, Khan in Star Trek, or Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate, he became in demand on talk shows around the world. Star Trek, for example, brought him television interview time in Asia and North America, as well as in the U.K.

  Increasing audience awareness of Cumberbatch and raising his TV and movie quotient (a measure of the average person’s awareness of an actor’s name or face) help ameliorate the perception that Cumberbatch’s fame is based more on Internet-based fandom than the general public’s recognition of his star power or that his celebrity is country specific.

  Cumberbatch’s filmography includes an already-long list of performances in ensembles, in which he may not have a large role but makes the most of his scenes. More important, he is memorable in those scenes, and his work not only stands out on screen but, contrary to some critics’ perceptions of August: Osage County, should stand the test of time. As he has become a film star, he has moved into increasingly highly touted and well-promoted big-budget films from major studios. This trajectory, in addition to the quality of his performances, indicates Cumberbatch as a rising star. He is being sought for roles in mainstream films that allow him to work with London’s or Hollywood’s brightest stars - and even being reflected in the glow of major stars helps ensure that he will keep moving up the A-list.

  70 A Special Evening with Meryl Streep on August: Osage County. Lifetime. 1 Jan. 2014.

  71 James Mottram. “’It’s Not Like I’ve Completely Conquered Everything’: Benedict Cumberbatch Interview.”

  72 12 Years a Slave. Dir. Steve McQueen. 20th Century Fox (worldwide). 2013.

  73 Guy Adams. “How Benedict Cumberbatch’s Family Made a Fortune from Slavery (And Why His Roles in Films Like 12 Years a Slave are a Bid to Atone for Their Sins). Mail Online. 31 Jan. 2014.

  74 Natalie Hanman. “Should Benedict Cumberbatch Say Sorry for the Slave Owners in His Family?” Guardian. 2 Feb. 2014.

  75 Ibid.

  76 “Chiwetel Ejiofor Learned Violin.” Xpose Entertainment. 25 Jan. 2014.

  77 Christopher Rosen. “Here’s What Happened After a Second Viewing of ‘12 Years a Slave.’” The Huffington Post. 1 Mar. 2014.

  78 Jessica Gelt. “TCA: The Curious Case of Benedict Cumberbatch and His Rabid Fans.” Los Angeles Times. 20 Jan. 2014.

  79 The 86th Academy Awards. ABC. Dir. Hamish Hamilton. 2 Mar. 2014.

  80 Ibid.

  81 The Ellen Degeneres Show. Scrapbook. 5 Mar. 2014.

  82 The 86th Academy Awards. 2 Mar. 2014.

  83 Larry Ong. “Oscars 2014: Benedict Cumberbatch, Harrison Ford, Jennifer Lawrence Among Presenters.” Epoch Times. 24 Feb. 2014.

  84 A Special Evening with Meryl Streep. 1 Jan. 2014.

  85 Jimmy Kimmel Live. ABC. 15 Jan. 2014.

  86 Michael Smith. “’August’ Star Benedict Cumberbatch Gives Bartlesville Women 2 Unique Experiences.” Tulsa World. 2 Jan. 2014.

  87 August: Osage County. DVD. Anchor Bay. 2014.

  88 “August: Osage County Filming Underway in Bartlesville and Osage County Itself.” Osage News. 9 Oct. 2012.

  89 August: Osage County. Dir. John Wells. The Weinstein Co., 2013.

  90 Michael Smith. “August: Osage County Stars Talk About Filming in Oklahoma.” Tulsa World. 12 Sep. 2013.

  91 A Special Evening with Meryl Streep. 1 Jan. 2014.

  92 Carolyn McDowall. “August: Osage County - The Dysfunctional Family from Hell.” Culture Concept Circle. 10 Jan. 2014.

  93 “August: Osage County: Benedict Cumberbatch ‘Little Charles Aiken.’” ScreenSlam. YouTube. 23 Nov. 2013.

  94 August: Osage County. CD. Columbia. 2013.

  95 Michael Smith. “’August’ Star Benedict Cumberbatch Gives Bartlesville Women 2 Unique Experiences.”

  96 Ibid.

  97 Rex Reed. “A Death in the Family: August: Osage County Stumbles on the Silver Screen.” New York Observer. 17 Dec. 2013.

  98 Elizabeth Weitzman. “’August: Osage County’ movie review: Adaptation Doesn’t Match Power of Pulitzer-winning Play.” New York Daily News. 26 Dec. 2013.

  99 James Killough. “Benedict Cumberbatch: Can a Character Actor Be a Leading Man?” Pure Film Creative. 24 Jan. 2014.

  100 Scott Foundas. “Toronto Film Review: ‘August: Osage County.’” Variety. 10 Sep. 2013.

  101 “August: Osage County: Benedict Cumberbatch ‘Little Charles Aiken.’” YouTube. 23 Nov. 2013.

  102 Emily Hewitt. “Benedict Cumberbatch iPhone Selfie Landed Him Meryl Streep Movie August: Osage County.” Metro. 21 Dec. 2013.

  103 Eric Kohn. “Telluride Film Festival Review; Steve McQueen’s ‘12 Years a Slave,’ Anchored by Brilliant Chiwetel Ejiofor, Is a Slavery Movie for the Ages.” Indiewire. 31 Aug. 2013.

  Chapter 5

  From Dragon - The Hobbit’s Smaug

  “Smaug is such a rich character, so vainglorious, decrepit. It’s ancient, powerful, and yet vulnerable... and very human in his greed and his covetousness”.[104]

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  When his son Benedict was a young boy, Timothy Carlton read The Hobbit to him as a bedtime story. Because Carlton is an actor, he played all the parts, including that of fearsome dragon Smaug. About thirty years later, the son took the initiative in getting the role of Smaug in Peter Jackson’s mammoth undertaking of a Hobbit trilogy. Cumberbatch sent Jackson an audition tape, which earned him the role.[105] In January 2012 the actor made his first trip to New Zealand to record his performance as Smaug. Although the dragon may be the showier role, the Necromancer also owes his backward-spoken dialogue (to create a creepier audio effect) and shadowy body to Cumberbatch.

  In addition to bedtime stories fuelling his imagination, young Cumberbatch may have been destined to play Smaug. He was born during the year of the fire dragon, and although his time in New Zealand took place during another year of the dragon, this time it was a water dragon. Fire and water create steam, perhaps a reason why Cumberbatch was later teased about his “steamy” depiction of Smaug enjoying the sensual nature of his lair.

  Nearly as much as Cumberbatch, director Jackson is enthusiastic about the dragon and his casting. At The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug[106] premiere held at Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre, Jackson told the media that “Smaug has to be more than just a voice... You want an actor who can bring a lot of intelligence, a lot of character to it” because “the dragon [must be] smarter than Bilbo... Bilbo was up against a very formidable foe”. Jackson later called Smaug “the Hannibal Lecter of the dragon world”.[1
07]

  The director could not say enough about Cumberbatch’s performance as Smaug, even if he also could not resist teasing audiences that the actor rolled around naked on a bearskin rug to get “in the mood” to portray Smaug in his comfy lair within the Lonely Mountain. (Cumberbatch told the LA press, “Peter loves to exaggerate” but joked that, when stretched out in a mo-cap suit atop materials simulating the dragon’s hoard, so that he could enact the dragon’s sensual enjoyment of all that warm gold, he thought “there’s going to be a little bit of dragon porn up here! But I didn’t strip off, despite what Peter says”.[108] More seriously, Jackson praised Cumberbatch’s “great voice” paired with his “great, sharp mind”[109] that made the actor’s contribution to the character’s development so impressive.

  Cumberbatch’s understanding of Smaug easily meshed with Jackson’s:

  People should be attracted to Smaug’s power, because he is awe-inspiring, but there is also a caveat. Dragons are symbols of power and objects of awe, true, but they are also talismans warning us of the destructive force that power brings... Power is to be respected and harnessed toward an express purpose that has benefit beyond the self.[110]

  Smaug, unfortunately, prefers to think only of himself, which ultimately leads to his demise (but not in Jackson’s second film in The Hobbit trilogy). J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit, based Smaug on the type of dragon described in literature like Beowulf. Such a dragon differs from later depictions in popular culture, like the movie dragons in Disney’s partially animated Pete’s Dragon (1977), the more dramatic DragonHeart (1996), DreamWorks’ animated How to Train Your Dragon (2011), or the John Hurt-voiced dragon in the BBC’s television series Merlin (2008-12). Many popular versions are pet-like or cuddly, but even the crankier dragons usually end up helping humans. Smaug is like none of these.

  As Felicia Jean Steele explained in a 2006 Mythlore article, Tolkien interpreted Beowulf’s “dragon as beast, with an awareness of his own bestiality”. He is a “wyrm,” an ancient beast, but he also is self-aware and sentient. Tolkien’s Smaug dreams and is not easily awakened from his slumber.[111] Jackson’s Desolation of Smaug depicts movie Smaug similar to Tolkien’s drawings of the red dragon but more importantly includes some of Tolkien’s dialogue. Smaug knows his own power and is proud of it. Like Tolkien’s and Beowulf’s dragons, movie Smaug relies on an excellent sense of smell and, as soon as he fully awakens, tries to identify Bilbo first by scent. He remembers encounters with other beings in Middle-earth and compares his impressions of Bilbo to that catalogue of species he has met.

  Cumberbatch’s voice and mo-cap performance from which Smaug is created on screen capture the essence of Tolkien’s ancient dragon. The actor’s voice cajoles and caresses Bilbo as Smaug toys with the hobbit; the dragon’s eyes narrow in displeasure as he spits “thief” to accuse Bilbo of entering the lair to abscond with the dragon’s gold. Smaug enjoys trading riddles with Bilbo but shows none of the childlike glee of Gollum with a potential “playmate”. The dragon is completely confident and masterful; any “games” are on his terms.

  Smaug is yet another highly intelligent character played by Cumberbatch, as well as another movie villain. Because Smaug is an enormous, fiery dragon, however, the actor could have had little input in the way Smaug finally looks or sounds on screen. An animated or CGI-designed character might mute the actor’s performance when the character’s voice becomes a synthesised blend of the actor’s sound sweetened or, in Smaug’s case, deepened by technology. Similarly, the dragon might not have been based on the actor’s movements in a mo-cap suit. Technology, however, enhanced, rather than inhibited, Cumberbatch’s performance.

  The actor insisted on wearing a mo-cap suit so he could influence Smaug’s expression and physicality as he spoke Smaug’s words. The actor lowered his voice a couple of octaves to the depths of his range, so much so that at the end of a long recording session, his vocal cords bled.[112] Smaug’s voice ultimately is the result of Cumberbatch’s voice as he acts the role and technology to get the “fire-breathing” aspects that cannot be found in a human voice. The actor elaborated that Smaug’s sound “was all my own voice until the last session where we used this [device] which drops it a couple of octaves so that you can flesh [it] out with a bit more colour and character”.[113]

  A Weta Workshop video shows how the design artists matched Cumberbatch’s mo-cap performance with Smaug’s motion. Because actor and dragon have very different physiologies, the “translation of performance from Benedict to Smaug wasn’t a one-to-one match like you’d get from a humanoid creature”. Thus, animators “had to transpose the elements of Benedict’s performance that were critical to the shot, such as head nuances and facial expressions”.[114]

  The video, quickly shared online, helped disabuse critics of the notion that Cumberbatch only voiced the dragon. In an interview with Louise Brealey, perhaps best known to television audiences as Sherlock’s Molly Hooper, Cumberbatch vented his discontent when a U.S. publicist inaccurately

  released this thing saying that I was voicing Smaug and it’s followed me around everywhere. I’m doing the movements! I worked for two days solid doing the motion capture for those scenes... and I did the motion capture for the Necromancer as well.[115]

  One aspect of filming that relied solely on movie magic was Cumberbatch acting with Martin Freeman during Smaug’s encounter with Bilbo. Although Freeman and Cumberbatch separately filmed and recorded dialogue for their scenes “together,” they knew each other’s style and working rhythms from acting together on Sherlock. Cumberbatch recorded his dialogue before Freeman returned to New Zealand, but responding to his co-star’s performance was not unduly difficult for “Bilbo”. Freeman explained that “I’m familiar with Ben’s voice and Peter [Jackson] had played me his read. So I had Ben’s voice in my head” while reacting to the dialogue being read extremely loudly by the film’s dialect coach.[116]

  Despite some articles touting the “reunion” of the Sherlock stars, the performances could not be further from those on the BBC series, not only because their characters are very different, but because the roles involve different approaches. Cumberbatch in particular found the role “freeing” because he could play a reptile and approach the physical presence of his character very differently than he would if he were playing a human.

  He was widely quoted as saying he did initial research at the Regent Park zoo, where he studied reptiles. During the mo-cap sequences, he curled his fingers to resemble claws and held his legs together to better slither. The dragon’s facial features on screen are easier to recognise as Cumberbatch related; the actor has narrowed his eyes in other roles, and the expression translates well to Smaug’s glowing, slitted eyes. Cumberbatch could spot aspects of his mo-cap performance in the finished version of Smaug: “I can sort of see bits of that in those close-ups when he’s one on one with Bilbo and with Thorin at the end; it’s vague but I can see underneath all those scales, the eyebrow movements and the mouth”.[117] The voice, however, captivates audiences because its sinuous sibilance perfects a reptilian sound and captures Smaug’s deceptively alluring presence. Although the trilogy is entitled The Hobbit, most moviegoers came to The Desolation of Smaug to see the dragon, and neither Weta nor Cumberbatch disappointed them.

  Reviews Revelling in Smaug

  Empire concluded that “We’ve seen many a dragon on screen before, but nothing with this much personality: Smaug is a startlingly well-executed creation, toggling between arrogance, indolence and rage as he uses his wyrm-tongue to try to draw out Bilbo”.[118] Entertainment.ie concurred, placing Cumberbatch’s mo-cap and vocal interpretation of Smaug at number three in its list of top five movie dragons. Smaug earned this designation because the actor “voiced [him] with deliciously evil intent”.[119]

  As much as critics and moviegoers revelled in Smaug, Cumberbatch seemed to do the same. His red carpet appearances in Los Angeles
and Berlin became memorable to fans not only because Cumberbatch was widely praised for Smaug but because the actor seemed in a playful mood during the events. For the LA premiere, Cumberbatch specifically chose to wear a “Smaug-coloured” deep red velvet smoking jacket in homage to his character. Evangeline Lily (Tauriel) teased him, and he blushed charmingly. While Martin Freeman was being interviewed live in LA, Cumberbatch pinched his co-star as he walked behind Freeman, who stopped midsentence to see who had accosted him.[120] The good-natured ribbing may be what fans remember from the LA press at the premiere, more so than the interesting but increasingly repetitive answers to similar questions posed on every red carpet or in press junkets. Cumberbatch also endeared himself to a few fans lucky enough to get autographs or pose for selfies with the actor, who ran across the street to greet fans after walking the media gauntlet.

  In Berlin, while standing in the spotlight with Freeman and other cast members at the European premiere, Cumberbatch took photos of the crowd and cast, then talked with his father on the phone. He held his mobile toward the cheering fans so his dad could hear the noise level and finally passed the phone to Freeman so that “Bilbo” could speak with Carlton.[121]