No wonder Benedict Cumberbatch found it so easy to destroy the hopes and dreams of millions of die hard Trekkies; he's never been overly bothered by the franchise. In an interview with The Sun, Cumberbatch, who's set to wreak havoc on Starfleet in the forthcoming Star Trek Into Darkness reveals that growing up, Star Trek never meant a great deal to him.
"“Not a huge deal" [it meant to him] said the Sherlock actor. "I watched it and I knew of it and I’ve seen pretty much every generation of it and I've seen some of the films, but I have never been an obsessed fan... When I was growing up, I saw Buck Rogers as well as Star Trek on telly, and then film wise I guess it was Star Wars, really... I've never had that longing to be in the club, even a football club actually. I guess it's something to do with being an only child... I was very gregarious but, I think, I never obsessed with anything, I just sort of bought the T-shirt." Too cool for school, eh Benedict? Well we certainly can't imagine anyone with such obsessive fanboy tendencies would ever have been good in the role of... whatever role you have in this movie.
What is a big deal to Cumberbatch, however, is the fear of being typecast in Hollywood movies: "I am very aware of the English transition of an actor being from a different culture coming over and they are being like, 'God, this guy does theatre and c***. We'd better give him the bad guy role and a cape and just make him be really horrible'."
This was never going to be the case with a director like JJ Abrams; he's got his head screwed on too much to pigeon hole an actor into a cardboard cut out character. Thus, Cumberbatch was convinced of the depth of character: "It was the pitch that JJ gave me, a couple of scenes to audition with and he fleshed out the whole world of the rest of the script, and there's a purpose and intention to his otherwise violent and pretty distressing actions that made it really intriguing... And I thought, 'Well, OK, there's a purpose to this man'."
Is this what will happen to our no doubt soon-to-be favourite villain? Will Hollywood forever see him as an evil bastard? We hope not; there's a lot more to him than that.
