Benedict Cumberbatch on 'The Thing With Feathers'

Variety

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00:00And Benedict, what appealed to you about this project?

00:03I was a huge fan of the book, like Dylan.

00:05And when I read his screenplay, I

00:08thought it was such a beautiful, delicate, finely

00:11wrought, but also very imaginative retelling.

00:14And then just meeting in person with him and the friendship

00:18we struck up, the trust that built,

00:19and I could already see on the page his kind

00:23of visual ambition for the project.

00:25For me, it was more about interrogating, OK, well,

00:27how do we bring that off day to day?

00:29And what am I going to need to be held in that space

00:32to get to where I need to get to?

00:33And immediately, I felt I had a real brother

00:37in arms as a collaborator.

00:40And so, yeah, the book in itself, early on, like Dylan,

00:46made a massive impact on me.

00:49It also came out at the same time

00:51as Megan Hunt and my sister-in-law's novella,

00:53and Max and her were very tight.

00:54And I was like, you're meeting Max Porter?

00:56I was very supportive of her novel, which did very well.

00:59And so, yeah, and I'd seen the stage adaptation,

01:03and I enjoyed it.

01:04And Killing Murphy's performance at the center of it

01:06was phenomenal.

01:09But I thought there's more to a dramatic turn of this

01:12that I think cinema could really examine.

01:14And Dylan's script certainly gave the promise of alluding to.

01:18So, yeah, that was it for me.

01:20And then I guess just as a role, to occupy that space,

01:25we're really fucking weird creatures, actors.

01:28You know, we want to be in these really extreme situations

01:30sometimes, which nobody else necessarily

01:33would to tell a story.

01:34But it does touch on something universal.

01:37And I think that that character is as near as me

01:41as any other I've played, to be honest.

01:44And the middle class, the middle life, the father,

01:50even the milieu of Susie Davis is brilliantly realized.

01:54Northwest London flat, it all felt very real.

01:57And I had an immediate access to it.

02:01And then the extremes, like I said,

02:04that's kind of meat and drink to us.

02:06I knew I had to go on quite a journey emotionally.

02:09And it turned out physically as well,

02:11because of how this grief manifests

02:13from an internal state into a real thing imagined.

02:16Menuhensis, faux, Mary Poppins, enabler,

02:19irritating best friend, therapist,

02:22everything that Crow is.

02:25Bad stand-up comic, I mean, all of it.

02:28It's just my writing.

02:29It's just your writing, yeah, bad comedy.

02:31And so there's a lot of meat on the bone for an actor.

02:35And then as a producer, just how to square

02:37the whole of realizing this ambition in a small budget,

02:40in an indie budget.

02:41You have to access so many difficult emotions.

02:45Was it hard to leave the part behind?

02:47Did it take a little while to?

02:49No, because it was all there.

02:50I felt like I was exhausted at the end of the day.

02:53All I needed was a bit of self-care, sleep and nourishment.

02:57I needed my home.

02:58I needed my family in my bed.

02:59That was really what I got from doing the job.

03:04There was no way it was gonna leak into my life.

03:07There was too much to give on the day

03:08for that to happen, really.

03:11And vice versa, I think, very much,

03:15very intimate set, very close set

03:17for a lot of it on one location.

03:19And then the studio, it always feels a bit naked

03:22when you're suddenly out in the open on location,

03:27but we didn't have too many, some extraordinary locations.

03:29We ended where the film ends as well,

03:30which felt like a great coda for the entire experience,

03:33that vastness of an ocean meeting a skyline of the sea,

03:37that kind of signaling of the eternal, as he says,

03:40goodbye to his wife's ashes

03:41and him and the children play on the beach.

03:43And it was a beautiful sort of sending off for the project

03:46and for everyone involved, really.

03:49I forgot what your question was.

03:51I've just gone down memory lane.

03:52You answer it.

03:53Okay.

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