Benedict Cumberbatch on acting with himself on Doctor Strange and exceeding his expectations
With multiple roles in Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Benedict Cumberbatch reveals why he found acting with himself a daunting challenge.
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Benedict Cumberbatch plays multiple versions of his famous superhero character in Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, sometimes in the same scene.
So how did multiple Oscar-nominee Cumberbatch, feted as one of the finest actors of his generation, rise to the challenge of having to act opposite Oscar-nominee Cumberbatch, feted as one of the finest actors of his generation?
“I’m pretty f--king great,” he jokes over Zoom call from Los Angeles, before quickly changing his mind. “I’m joking. I was terrible, I wasn’t there – I didn’t even turn up. What sort of arrogance is that? Who works like that, I mean seriously.”
Marvel fans know and love Cumberbatch’s goateed, red-caped Master of the Mystic arts from the first Doctor Strange film, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and last year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, all of which have been critical and box office hits.
The new film, the 28th in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, follows on from No Way Home and finds the good Doctor Stephen Strange flitting between alternate realities, which are home to other versions of the character said to include Sinister Strange, Supreme Strange, Defender Strange and even Zombie Strange.
“It was a little bit daunting,” admits Cumberbatch of the Strange match-ups achieved through studio trickery and stand-ins. “The idea on the page was interesting but doing it was really hard. I much preferred it when I had real professionals to act with.
“But it was a nice challenge and fun one, and different one, and a really interesting way into re-examining and reshaping the character.”
Having now spent more than six years in the MCU after being cast as Strange ahead of Jared Leto, Joaquin Phoenix and Ryan Gosling, Cumberbatch says he’s used to the huge action and effects scenes that often have him waving his arms intricately as he casts spells and conjures weapons to protect the earth from all manner of imaginary interdimensional foes. While he pays tribute to the thorough preparation and storyboarding of Multiverse of Madness director Sam Raimi, and the Marvel team in visualising the CGI monsters, he does admit the experience can still be a little, well, strange.
“Obviously these things aren’t in existence in this universe so we are having to project something and create something out of nothing,” he says. “People say isn’t that weird and odd and don’t you feel stupid – and, yes, you do feel all of those things, but you get used to it and you also just revel in the childlike joy of creating something purely out of your imagination.”
Raimi, who directed Tobey Maguire’s trilogy of Spider-Man movies in the early 2000s, was a late replacement on Multiverse Of Madness after the director of the first Doctor Strange film, Scott Derrickson, left the sequel due to the dreaded creative differences. As such, he leaned heavily on Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen, whose hugely powerful but unstable character Wanda Maximoff – aka Scarlet Witch – accompanies Strange on his latest adventures.
“I loved working with him because he’s such a great actor,” says Raimi of Cumberbatch. “He is constantly challenging the material – is this good enough? What about this possibility? And that’s exactly what a director needs – somebody who wants to take the script and elevate it to the next level.
“But his familiarity with the character he had created really helped, same with Lizzie Olsen’s mastery of her character Scarlet Witch.”
The release this week of Multiverse of Madness finds Cumberbatch in a red-hot vein of form. In addition to his supporting role in the $2.9 billion-grossing No Way Home, he’s also riding high on the success of last year’s Netflix drama The Power Of the Dog. His role as a mean-spirited, deeply repressed Montana rancher earned him a nomination for this year’s Best Actor Oscar, which went to Will Smith but many thought Cumberbatch should have won.
The experiences could hardly have been more different: the fantastical Marvel movies were shot largely on sound stages in the US and UK over many months, while Jane Campion’s slow-burning drama was filmed in the wilds of New Zealand with Cumberbatch famously staying in character between takes for the entire 12-week (Covid interrupted) shoot.
“There are different muscles at work,” Cumberbatch says of the wildly contrasting experiences. “And I don’t mean the (actual) muscles, or the suits or the fighting or the training … I love the fact that I get to play in such a variety of stories and characters, but also methodologies and approaches to the work. It keeps me guessing and fresh and interested and challenged. And hopefully learning.”
The son of acclaimed British actors Timothy Carlton and Wanda Ventham, Cumberbatch has been acting since his years at the exclusive Harrow School in London and graduated from the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art with a Master of Arts in classical acting. Ever since he has moved effortlessly between the stage, television and the big screen, impressing as Hamlet, Sherlock Holmes and Patrick Melrose as well as playing key roles in huge Hollywood franchises such as The Hobbit trilogy and Star Trek, and earning his first Oscar-nomination playing British cryptographer Alan Turning in The Imitation Game.
His hugely successful and eclectic career earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last month, as well as being honoured with the Santa Barbara Film Festival’s Cinema Vanguard Award. Cumberbatch says he never dared to dream that he’d have the career he has had to date, but is determined not to rest on his laurels.
“I just wanted to work regularly enough to earn a living and enjoy it, and make friends and have a social life, and do what I had seen my mother and father do very successfully and garnered the respect of their peers in the process,” he says. “I never thought it would reach these heady heights. I had ambitions to be good at my job but I didn’t know that it would result in these kinds of moments or this career.
“I don’t look back much so the Walk of Fame moment and the Santa Barbara Film Festival moment were just time capsule moments of being shown or told what I had done over the last 20 years. It was quite overwhelming in a pleasant way. Slightly embarrassing at times, but slightly gobsmacking as well.”
Cumberbatch winces slightly when asked what characteristics he most shares with his magical Marvel alter-ego, before admitting to flashes of impatience and arrogance.
“But one of his great strengths is that he is able to change and learn from his mistakes, and he has a certain amount of humility, which I like to believe I do have,” he says.
“I’m aching to learn and make myself a better person and a better actor, and that’s my chief motivation for choosing projects and who I work with at the moment.”
But the clean-shaven Cumberbatch says they part ways when it comes to the sometime Sorcerer Supreme’s elaborate facial hair.
“I am groomed for you guys but I really don’t give as much of a s--- as he does,” he says with a laugh. “He’s really vain – he spends a lot of time clipping that beard and doing the fricking hair and I couldn’t give less of a s---.”
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness opens in cinemas tomorrow.
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Originally published as Benedict Cumberbatch on acting with himself on Doctor Strange and exceeding his expectations
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