Benedict Cumberbatch revealed why he was 'frightened' to do 'The Thing With Feathers'

At the evening before the London premiere of the highly anticipated film The Thing With Feathers, Max Porter, author of the novella on which it is based, and Benedict Cumberbatch, its lead actor spoke of Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine

Porter said, “A lot of people called bullshit. But, actually, I don’t ever think about the box office.”

“I think about collaboration. Think about the relationship you have with the person you’re sitting with in a room, saying, ‘Here’s a way of doing this character on screen.’ Deal with that. Then I meet Benedict and talk to him about the relationship he’s going to have with his character,” he added.

“Hang on,” Cumberbatch said, adding, “Let’s go back to the Rock for a minute, because I don’t think it’s complete bullsh*t. He’s so locked into an extraordinarily successful business relationship with the entertainment industry.”

“And this is the first time he’s saying, ‘Actually, for me, this is about the challenge of doing something I’m frightened of. I’m not smiling at the press and doing my routine, I’m doing character work,’” the Sherlock Holmes star mentioned.

Cumberbatch, who has starred in Doctor Strange, The Hobbit and Sherlock, but none of these experiences prepared him for his role in The Thing With Feathers.

His unnerving scene partner in the film adaptation of Porter’s book Grief Is the Thing With Feathers – a project Cumberbatch also executive produced – was the product of animatronics, the physical performance of the actor Eric Lampaert, the voice of David Thewlis, and much dark plumage.

“From a performative point of view, his performance was extraordinary in itself, but it was an amalgamation of five different people’s artistry,” The Grinch star says of Lampaert inside his bird suit.

“I arrived on set,” Benedict Cumberbatch recalled, adding, “I’d been told about the kind of model he was going to be – an artist called Nicola Hicks had made this incredible maquette – but nothing quite prepared me.”