In a new cover story for VARIETY, Benedict Cumberbatch speaks with Executive Editor Brent Lang about DOCTOR STRANGE’s future in the MCU, working with Robert Downey Jr. in the franchise (and his reaction to learning Downey would be joining again), hating celebrity, and THE THING WITH FEATHERS, which premieres at Sundance. He also discusses his budding partnership with director Wes Anderson, what it would take for him to return to SHERLOCK, and more.
Cumberbatch on Doctor Strange’s future in the MCU:
Cumberbatch tells Variety that Doctor Strange is taking a hiatus in the next Marvel sequel, 2026’s “Avengers: Doomsday.”
“Is that a spoiler? Fuck it!”
Cumberbatch shares that things changed when Jonathan Majors—whose character, Kang, was intended to serve as the main antagonist of the next phase of the comic book film franchise—was fired in 2024 after being convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend.
Cumberbatch’s absence from “Doomsday” has to do with “the character not aligning with this part of the story.” And though he probably shouldn’t be saying this, he also reveals that Doctor Strange is “in a lot” of “Avengers: Secret Wars,” which will hit theaters in 2027. “He’s quite central to where things might go,” Cumberbatch teases. And he hints that the character, last seen casting spells in 2022’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” will appear in a third stand-alone film, but is hesitant to say too much.
“[Marvel is] very open to discussing where we go next. Who do you want to write and direct the next one? What part of the comic lore do you want to explore so that Strange can keep evolving? He’s a very rich character to play. He’s a complex, contradictory, troubled human who’s got these extraordinary abilities, so there’s potent stuff to mess about with.”
On learning how to take a looser approach to playing a superhero by observing Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland’s banter in “Spider-Man: Homecoming”:
“I learned a lot by seeing how at ease and improvisatory they are. It’s hard because you have this huge apparatus around you, but it’s so important.”
On Robert Downey Jr. rejoining the Marvel Franchise as Doctor Doom:
It was a secret so tightly guarded that Cumberbatch only found out about it while watching the live coverage of Marvel’s 2024 Comic-Con presentation. Cumberbatch immediately grabbed his phone and messaged Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige.
“I texted, ‘What the fuck?’ and then quickly added, ‘Good what-the-fuck. I mean, good what-the-fuck.’”
Cumberbatch says that Downey helped keep things light on the set of “Avengers: Endgame,” and would allude to their shared history portraying Sherlock Holmes.
“We had a gas about being the two Sherlocks on set. But there was some line of dialogue where someone turns to us and says, ‘No shit, Sherlock.’ Well, we took out all that meta stuff. We just said, ‘No, no, no. Better to leave that for the fan fiction.’”
On his appreciation for Marvel:
“It’s the modern myths of our times. Yes, it’s huge and unwieldy, but Marvel is so committed to getting it right. Even when we make one of these Avengers films and it gets exponentially huger, we’re still just kids playing in the sand pit. We’re still just making shit up and having fun with it.”
On why he hates the term “celebrity”:
“It’s so derogatory, and just lumps anyone famous together. Am I a ‘celebrated’ person? Well, for what? For selling cheese? For being on a reality show? For doing something outrageous? For being an actor?”
On being billed as an unlikely sex symbol while he was starring in the BBC series “Sherlock”:
“I’m not Brad, I’m not Leonardo, I’m not a typical movie star. People were scrambling for ‘Why is he at all attractive to us?’ But for me to guess and try to understand that is so fucking weirdly navel-gazing. I’m not sitting around thinking, ‘Why am I sexy?’ I worry about myself in the mirror as I age, like every other fucker does.”
On how “The Thing With Feathers” offers a change of pace since joining the MCU:
“The Thing With Feathers” is a dark drama about a father struggling to hold his family together after his wife dies suddenly.
“‘Feathers’ offered a close-quarter, nuanced and nimble work that really appeals. I’ve been in some very brilliant but monolithic kind of tentpole films. They’re great fun, but it can get stodgy. It can feel like you’re waiting a lot of the time to get called to the set.”
On his budding partnership with Wes Anderson:
The two first worked together on “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” with Cumberbatch staying at Anderson’s house throughout the shoot as a pandemic protocol.
“We needed to be in a COVID bubble, and I had a choice between being in a hotel or staying with him. Being in someone else’s home could be awkward, but he immediately made it relaxed, and there was amazing food, and it was like being at fucking film school…For me, it felt more like we were doing our fifth movie together rather than our first. [There was] the excitement of a new collaboration, but the fun and comfort of working with old friends…I feel like, ‘Why hasn’t this been happening for years and years?’ I just wish I could build a time machine and go back and work on all those other films with him.”
On what it would take for him to return to “Sherlock”:
“A lot of money,” he says, joking, before adding, “It would take it to be better than it ever was. You leave them or yourselves wanting more. There’s always that itch to scratch, but I think it would have to be the superlative version of what we’ve already achieved.”
[Photo Credit: Zoe McConnell for Variety Magazine, Courtesy of Variety]
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