Benedict Cumberbatch & Gaby Hoffman Talk ERIC

ODE

Benedict Cumberbatch & Gaby Hoffman sit down with Jodie McCallum to chat all about their new Netflix series, Eric.  Report by Nathoom. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

Transcript

00:00Hello, how are you?

00:01Hello, how are you?

00:02Nice to see you again, it's been a while.

00:04It has been a while.

00:05Now, Benedict, I've interviewed you a few times and I know that you are a really lovely man,

00:10but Vincent, male, he's complicated, doesn't he?

00:15Yeah.

00:16So why did you want to take him on?

00:18Because I think he externalises the sort of human mess that a lot of us get the chance perhaps

00:25with a better childhood to work on earlier.

00:29He is a child, he is selfish, he is narcissistic, he isn't a narcissist.

00:35As you discover, there's a lot of causality that gets revealed in this show.

00:39And he carries secrets and pain, all of which is slowly revealed,

00:45and he goes on an enormous journey of being lost to find and be found.

00:51And I feel that's the sort of most exciting drama.

00:55I'm not interested in just playing nice guys who fall foul or are nice all the way through.

01:01It's not for me ever about the popularity contest.

01:04And so without just being defensive about my character,

01:07because obviously I'm playing him so I have to find empathy with him,

01:10I also feel it's the grit in the lens of how to examine the deeper stuff that makes us human beings, actually.

01:18And it's very extreme that he's someone who's mentally incredibly unwell

01:23and has never had love in his childhood, and it acts out as the child adult that he is

01:29and forms toxic relationships because of that behavior.

01:33And that trauma passes on, it ripples through his family, through his work, through society,

01:37and it's a hell of an odyssey and dark night of the soul kind of journey to get to where he does,

01:42but there is light at the end of it.

01:44And those kind of journeys are the meat and bone of what I like to do as an actor.

01:49They're the real food you want to get tucked into to continue the eating metaphor.

01:54Are you hungry?

01:56No, just slightly tired.

01:58But yeah, you'd think I was hungry.

02:01But yeah, it's a very satisfying thing to play those kind of roles.

02:05Yeah, definitely, and you do it so well.

02:07I read in the production notes, Gabby, that before you even read the script,

02:10you said to your husband, are we up for a family adventure in Budapest? Is that right?

02:14Yeah, that's right.

02:16These are the most important questions, by the way, let's be honest.

02:19What's the point of even reading the scripts if he says no, because then I'm not going.

02:24But is that a big decider for you guys?

02:26Because I feel like it would be for me if it's somewhere I want to go.

02:29It's the biggest, really.

02:31Beyond the quality of people you want to work with, yes.

02:34Because obviously it's set in 1980s New York, I believe you grew up in New York in the 1980s,

02:39but then you were filming in Budapest, but did it kind of match up?

02:43Was it like quality control as it used to be?

02:46Actually, yeah, it was quite incredible the first time I walked on set,

02:50which was in a studio, this apartment of ours that was built.

02:53I actually started to cry because it felt so reminiscent of my childhood.

02:58But then also the energy of the city of Budapest, it felt very much like 1980s in New York.

03:05It has a sort of heaviness that's carried.

03:09It's beautiful.

03:11It's got a sort of chipped glory.

03:13New York now doesn't retain that, but in the 80s it certainly did.

03:18So yeah, it all sort of made sense to me.

03:20What about the Hungarian?

03:22I also grew up with a lot of Hungarians in New York City in the 80s.

03:25So it kind of made sense to me to be in New York City in the 80s surrounded by Hungarian.

03:30What the fuck?

03:32It was just meant to be.

03:34Before you went, you're like, do not, this is going to work out.

03:37The dream within the dream within the dream.

03:39I went into Butch's, our child's bedroom, because I just saw lots of my childhood,

03:46the stuff that we imported and were obsessed with from ET paraphernalia

03:51to the kind of squishies and toys and just all of it.

03:54And minus the hamster, I didn't have any pets growing up, which is another reason.

03:59I had many hamsters.

04:00I killed them all in different ways.

04:02Accidentally, of course.

04:04It's a hard place to grow up though as well for hamsters.

04:07New York in the 80s.

04:09Yeah.

04:10At least they're contained animals.

04:12I wasn't actually going to say this because it's very left field,

04:15but my puppy is actually called Vincent.

04:17It's a great name.

04:18Which is such a random name for it.

04:20It's not a name you see a lot.

04:22You'll never look at your puppy the same again.

04:24I know, and I'm like, oh, Bessie.

04:26When is that alcohol addiction of your puppy ever going to be solved?

04:29It's tricky.

04:30Well, listen, you guys are both absolutely breathtaking in this.

04:33As always, thank you so much.

04:35You're welcome.

04:36Thank you.

04:37I love you.

04:38I love you too.

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