-Our first guest tonight is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning
actor you know from movies like "The Imitation Game,"
"The Hobbit," and the "Avengers" franchise,
as well as the series "Sherlock."
He stars in "The Power of the Dog,"
which is in select theaters today
and on Netflix December 1st.
Let's take a look.
-Now, gentlemen, look, see -- that's what you with the cloth.
-Oh! -Oh!
-Right.
-It's really just for wine drips.
-Oh, you got that, boys?
Only for the drips.
[ Laughter ]
Now get us some food.
-Please welcome to the show Benedict Cumberbatch.
Hello, Benedict. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Hi, Seth. How are you?
-Now, Benedict, I know you to be a lovely person,
and that is very much not who you are playing in this film.
-You should see me on a Monday morning.
No, I mean, it was a bit of a reach, to say the least.
And, I mean, you know, it's a strange one.
You get a call from Jane Campion and you just say, you know,
"What? When? Where?
I'm in."
And then you find out what it is and go, "Why me?"
She had faith.
She knew there was something about this character,
something that made him truly vulnerable
underneath the hard exterior of sort of toxic masculinity
that she thought I could bring to it.
And she had every faith that I'd get the kind of --
the heart and the kismet down.
And I have a few experiences I -- She was amazing.
She was amazing in rehearsals, as well,
production, and ever since.
And she said, "Look, if there's anything
you're feeling insecure about,
we're here to help you as production."
Please let us know."
And I went, "Uh...okay.
Banjo playing, being an ass[bleep]
whittling, whistling.
I mean, just this list of things this guy has
lived, breathed, and mastered over 40-odd years
of his life on this ranch in 1925 Montana.
So they took me to dude camp,
and I learned to do everything I did in the film, pretty much.
-I mean, not only do you get to work with Jane Campion,
you get to shoot in New Zealand.
That must have added to the many pleasures of this project.
-Oh, I mean, you know, it's her kingdom,
but, my God, it's such a welcoming place.
Everyone there is sort of hard-wired to be hospitable.
And that landscape is another character in the film
and just a gift for an actor, especially one playing
a character who's so much about the outside
and bringing the outside in.
He's a man who never takes his clothes off.
He never washes.
He's incredibly buttoned up and contained
and dirtified by his work in a very honest way.
And, you know, the landscape is also his refuge.
It's the one place where he can be private and be true to the
sort of the secret that he's hiding
and find this sort of moment to express that
and connect with that.
And, at the same time, it's what he masters --
the weather, the animals, the men that help him run the ranch.
And to be in a place like that, which is truly still
some of the most, I think, spectacular wilderness
on the planet, was just such a gift for this movie.
-So, I heard that you went a whole week without showering.
Was this a choice that you made for your character
or did Jane ask this of you?
-It's such a thing, this sort of people not washing.
But, yeah, this was for character work,
I would say, first and foremost.
And it was a request, and my family hasn't yet arrived
to the country, so that was helpful.
However, you know, there was a cleaner
who came in once or twice a week.
And then Jane went, "Oh, this is great.
So, we're going to meet some friends for sushi.
And I'm like, "Oh, no. I'm like a biohazard sign."
I'm walking 5 feet in front of me, you know.
People wanting selfies are gonna, "Can I have a -- Ugh!"
And just run in the opposite direction,
which is not a bad thing sometimes.
But, you know, in rehearsal and just to feel --
This guy didn't wash for like months.
So it's pretty tame.
It's big in our modern-day environment
of cleanliness and one or two showers --
open the debate -- a day.
But, you know, yeah, it's quite something to go there
even just for a week.
It's very peculiar.
-So, I heard Jesse Plemons, who plays your brother,
the incredible actor -- that one of the things
Jane asked was for you guys to, as actors,
learn each others' smell.
She asked you to waltz together,
to take an afternoon nap together.
Now, I have to ask,
does it take a director of Jane Campion's level
for you to say, "Okay."
-[ Chuckles ] Uh...yeah, kind of.
It's not a request I get much on the Marvel set.
But, look, I'd happily take a nap with
Jesse Plemons on any job.
-Yeah, yeah.
-He's a sweetheart and an extraordinarily gifted actor,
one of the best, if not the best, of our generation.
I have so much admiration for him.
And, yeah, you know, there we are as brothers
suddenly just thrown together
for a brief moment of trying to create this story.
And these guys, odd as it seems to us now,
shared the same bedroom.
Not the same bed. We didn't nap in the same bed.
But, you know, what is it to sort of lie
beside one another in those sort of --
everything that sleep is about,
to be something that's sort of shared
in such an intimate space.
And, you know, I've grown up with the guy.
I've knocked about with him. We've fought.
Everything that brothers do over their lifetime.
And I was just meeting this very cool dude
that I was full of admiration for, off an airplane.
And, you know, to be thrown together in such a peculiar way
was actually really, really helpful.
It just broke that down and made it something real
and connected.
And, yeah, all preciousness just evaporated.
It was great.
-It so funny to me.
And, again, it speaks to your great range
as an actor to work on a project like this
where it's very much, like, the authenticity
of learning another actor's smell
versus you mentioned a Marvel movie,
where you show up, and it's like,
"Now pretend that over there is a monster."
-I know.
"There's the person you smell. It's a Ping-Pong ball."
Yeah, I know.
But, you know, I think it still requires the same kind of
level of interrogation and authenticity.
You're just using your imagination a lot more.
Not least because, you know, you can't afford
to fix it on a post when you're doing a film like Jane's.
And, you know, the real-world environment
is a gift in that sense for "The Power of the Dog."
And, also, the sort of childish game play and just freedom
of imagination for doing the sort of Marvel work is --
It's a different muscle,
but it's equally as interesting and challenging for me.
I love both. I really do.
-You seem like someone that would be great to
collaborate on a film set,
and, yet, I heard a story that early in your acting days,
you were in a school play as a young man.
You were playing Joseph and you thought the actor
who was playing Mary was taking too long
with her line and you shoved her offstage.
[ Laughter ]
True story?
-Yeah. -Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, true story.
And this voice came across an outdoor swimming pool
in Hampstead, near where I live, only last year,
going, "Benedict, Benedict,
I was the Mary you pushed off the stage
when we were kids."
You know, this fully grown adult.
And I said, "I don't know where to put myself right now.
I'm so, so sorry."
And she went, "Oh, no. It's great.
I dine out on the story." So...
-Yeah, I guess that's true.
I mean, if you're not going to make it as an actor yourself,
you might as well get shoved by someone
who's been incredibly successful.
-No, I would not -- Yeah, I wouldn't advocate
that as a way into a career.
-So, then you -- Obviously, you go on to drama school.
What kind of student were you then?
-Um...mixed.
You know, I had great respect for a lot of the process,
a lot of the classes, and then, at other times,
I think I hadn't got being the sort of
student who liked to sort of muck about
and make his friends laugh
at the back of the class out of my system.
And, you know, there were moments
of great integrity and stuff that I learned,
great pearls of wisdom and just shards of things
that just I exorcise all the time in my work,
and then other moments where I was going,
"This is just -- You know, I need to sort of do something
to not get bored and just
entertain people at the back of the room."
So, I would say a mixed bag.
But I'm very proud of my school.
I'm president of LAMDA now.
And, you know, I think there's lots of things
I'm grateful for
and the privilege of my upbringing and my life,
but one of the things I notice most is,
at the beginning of an actor's career,
every single advantage counts.
And so we're trying really hard to make that school
as accessible and as inclusive as possible.
So that's a thing I'm really proud of
being part of and being back in that environment to do.
But, yeah, at the time, yeah, I could be a pain in the ass.
-Very nice, very adult of you to be able to admit that now.
You also have a show coming out on Amazon Prime
called "The Electrical Life of --"
am I saying this right? -- "Louis Wain"?
-Yes, you are saying it right. You are saying it right.
I'm super-proud of this film.
The director and re-writer, I should say --
It was Simon Stephenson originally,
but it's Will Sharpe.
He's an extraordinary talent.
And, rather like Jane, he just has a master of
every aspect of filmmaking, from the ratio of the screen to
the texture of the clothing to, I mean, you know,
even going up to the first five minutes in the recording
of his brother's score -- it's a very talented family --
and saying, "This is what the character's feeling
at the moment that you're playing this theme."
And it was just -- I fell in love with Louis.
He's a very quiet hero in a loud Victorian world.
And he suffered a great deal,
finding it difficult to be in this world.
He was diagnosed in his life with schizophrenia,
though he's not here now, obviously, to ask or observe.
So, out of respect, we're less prescriptive in our take on him.
But, you know, he struggled.
And it's really a film about love,
the love he had for his wife,
beautifully played by Claire Foy,
sustaining him throughout his life and his career.
And -- Oh, gosh. I don't know.
I mean, there are just some characters
that don't leave you alone.
I loved Phil Burbank, perversely,
'cause he's a troubled dude, but, Louis Wain --
There's just -- Yeah, I've got a real soft spot for him.
I think he's a very special human being
and a story worth telling.
-Well, I can't wait to see that.
And congratulations again on the film.
It really is -- It is a film.
We were talking briefly before the show.
And I know it sounds a little pretentious,
but it is really a piece of cinema
and it's incredibly engaging and it's a wonderful story.
But congratulations.
-Thanks so much, Seth. Thank you.
-Benedict Cumberbatch, everybody.
"The Power of the Dog" is in select theaters today,
on Netflix December 1st.