Benedict Cumberbatch on exploring dark characters in new Netflix series, Eric
In his Oscar-nominated performance in , Benedict Cumberbatch brought the chilling and fearsome rancher Phil Burbank to the big screen.
With his latest TV series, the English actor is again exploring the darker side of human nature to riveting effect.
Netflix series sees Cumberbatch play Vincent, a successful puppeteer and presenter of 1980s New York TV show , whose troubled personality and abrasive ways have been catching up with him in the workplace and in his marriage.
When his nine-year-old son Edgar goes missing on the way to school, Vincent discovers his son has created Eric, a monster that has allowed him to express himself. Desperate to find his boy, he’s determined to bring Eric to life for his TV show in a bid to find Edgar.
“I was Edgar’s age in 1985, so I had a little tear when I walked into his bedroom, saw the paraphernalia and the various toys and recognised the material layer of more innocent engagement,” says Cumberbatch of the show, created by Abi Morgan ( , ).
As the series goes on, audiences get to discover more about the very complicated Vincent, whose combative nature is leading to personal issues, a volatile marriage and messy working environment.
“He doesn’t really have a purpose beyond an amazing creative outlet, but even that’s being curtailed and controlled and constrained,” says Cumberbatch. “It’s the only place he’s found his voice, which has become increasingly controlling and toxic in its defensiveness, as it’s under assault, and it’s so key to his identity.”
Are these darker characters more difficult to shake off at the end of a working day? “Oh, that’s easy, and in a way because of how nice my life is and the three little people at home that aren’t that interested in and shouldn’t be near the darker stuff I’m playing with,” says the actor. “It just drops at the door and I put it on again when I’m in a car going to work in costume. Both (are) transitions — it’s hard at the beginning to get into it. It’s hard to leave alone at the end of it.”
Like the best long-form television, Eric has several layers and characters to it. It’s a police procedural, a drama about an imploding marriage and a glimpse behind the curtain of a TV production all rolled into just under six hours of storytelling. What does Cumberbatch feel it is about the format that lends itself to this story?
“Space. The ability to develop complex and dynamic stories and characters, spend time with them, to really know them. A six-parter or a ten-parter or whatever it might be, it does feel like a more novelistic form of the visual medium at the moment. Netflix are masters of the hooky algorithm — they know how to keep you wanting more, do that binge thing.
“With the best writers of which Abi is chief amongst them, it’s just something that comes through you of that moment but through that amazing filter of imagination and capability as a writer. It’s a pretty potent combination and a delight to play.”
Born to actors Timothy Carlton and Wanda Ventham, Cumberbatch has become one of the world’s biggest stars, seamlessly flitting between indie dramas and juggernaut blockbusters — he plays Dr Strange in the Marvel universe movies.
His TV successes include , while he’s been Oscar-nominated for both Jane Campion’s and for playing maths genius Alan Turing in Morten Tyldum’s .
Eric feels like something new from him again, and the actor — who likes to prepare in depth in advance of a role — did a deep dive into the culture and politics of 1980s America. It was a time of great change, with the series exploring crime rates, corruption, endemic racism and the AIDS epidemic.
“I wanted to understand the culture that had nurtured him or not nurtured him into the mess he is when you meet him,” says Cumberbatch. “It was everything preceding the drama on the page, really. Then obviously, there are some deep questions, the deeper subtext throughout Abi’s writing.
“I had to get there through that kind of research, but everything else is contained in this drama. Then a lot of stuff around puppetry and dialect and all the facets of the story that needed to be convincing.
“It had her name on it, that was enough to meet and talk. She holds the entire world with such profound depth and detail that has to do with individual characterisation. You have a very available, walking blueprint for characterisation, for building your work around. So I felt very secure in the deep dive into the dark journey that he goes on.”
Like her leading star, writer Abi Morgan — whose other screen credits include , and — was born into a family of creatives. Her mother is the actor Pat England and her father the theatre director Gareth Morgan.
Among its numerous story threads, Eric leans into what it’s like to grow up in a creative household.
“What’s so brilliant about Benedict and I think, for me, that’s really chimed is we have a real shared history about growing up with actors and what it means to be backstage, to understand that world and to understand that being a creative is both a blessing and a curse,” says Morgan. “So it was the idea of colliding this creativity and how that creative would find his way through a city and go on this quest to find his son. And in finding his son, it became a journey to find himself.”
Morgan knew this world and time well, having spent a gap year working in New York in 1986, where she looked after a little boy during part of that period. “It felt such a vibrant city. I think it’s something we all talked about collectively as a cast and as a creative team — as a culture in the 70s and 80s, America had such a huge impact, I think, the films and the TV and music.
“Going there was an incredibly exciting time, but also I could see there was this dark underbelly. I think it was a coming of age for me realising that and seeing so many parallels, I guess, with my own experience of growing up in the UK and all those big issues like the AIDS epidemic, and institutionalised racism and internal corruption, things I’d only ever seen in the movies.
“Suddenly, I was in New York, I started to see the world in a slightly different way and I guess that was the starting point and then to suddenly see it from the perspective of this young boy, that was really, really important.”