Benedict Cumberbatch plays a cowboy in 1920s Montana who can ride, rope, and roll a cigarette with the best of them in the new Netflix drama “The Power of the Dog.” He’s severe, pale-eyed, gorgeous, and brutally charming. He’s also a big bully who appears to enjoy punishing everyone else around him. And watching him wear a stetson and whistle with menace in the film’s first trailer surely fits the bill. The film is a riveting psychological drama as well as a study on male enlightenment.
According to Benedict Cumberbatch the most difficult aspect of playing an American rancher in the film, The Power of the Dog, was mastering how to smoke a cigarette one-handed while seated on a horseback. Many of Cumberbatch’s team colleagues felt he could pull it off, but the star believed it was “very, really hard.”
Cumberbatch dived deep into how it took to be an actual cowboy on the set, with director Jane Campion’s assistance.
“Did you truly embrace it, in the sense that you didn’t shower?” Tracy Smith, a correspondent, questioned.
“Yeah. I mean, not for the duration of the shoot. That would be really risky, in my opinion!” Cumberbatch then responded. “I might have turned into a biohazard. But I did that for a week and a half at the start of the shoot, or rather, at the start of rehearsals.”
“Longer than a week?”
“Yeah. To simply not wash is quite a feat in the twenty-first century.”
He also picked up “a crazy amount” of abilities, such as whistling.
For the fact, he does a good job at cleaning… And there’s chatter that he’ll sweep the Oscars next year, which comes as no surprise to anybody who’s seen him on large or small screens.
Benedict Cumberbatch first became known to the general public through the 2010 BBC series “Sherlock.”
“You went from working actor to renowned actor in, what, 90 minutes?” Smith said.
“Yeah. Yeah, it was like a 12-year instant success story in 90 minutes.”
But it appears that he has been anticipating it his entire life.
Benedict, the son of career actors, briefly pondered law school prior to following in his parents’ footsteps onto the stage. “They provided me a really stable childhood, and afforded me every option with my schooling, with their raising of me, with affection and a huge amount of resource to just do something bit safer, less peripatetic,” Cumberbatch added. And I turned it all around by being an actor!” He has made them happy, and they have told him so from the start.
Cumberbatch was nominated for an Oscar for his act in “The Imitation Game” as the English mathematician who assisted decipher the Nazis’ special password. However, in MCU, he has recently played a new type of hero.
But, as the father of three little children with his wife Sophie Hunter, he says he’s pickier about just what he takes on.
“There’s nothing like my family in my job life,” he remarked of his priorities. “So, whatever work I do, which is a lot, it gives me a lot of life experience and opportunity, and nothing compares to that, as anyone with children knows.”
Of course, in acting, like in life, the most meaningful endeavors are frequently the most difficult. Playing a vicious cowboy was indeed an emotional and physical challenge. However, Benedict Cumberbatch considers everything as a blessing.
“You know, the thankfulness of being fortunate to be doing what you enjoy for a career is just… I’m still pinching myself over it. Don’t inform the producers, because they’ll most likely come to me with lesser bids! However, that is the truth. It’s like, wow, what a job! What an incredible way to live one’s life.”
