I Beetlejuice’d Benedict Cumberbatch, I think. Earlier today, I said I hoped for a full-fledged promotional tour from Bendy, the likes of which we haven’t seen in two years. And now here he is on the cover of the November issue of Vanity Fair. VF went to the way-back machine for this cover shot, right? This looks like Benedict circa 2011. I will say that I enjoy the “Teen Beat” vibe of the cover shot though – he’s so dreamy, in a total alien-otter way. His hair looks great here. Anyway, you can read VF’s cover story here, they put the whole thing online. Much of it is about how he’s the Internet’s Boyfriend, although I think VF is about three years too late on that one? Some highlights:
He didn’t get any sleep before the interview: “It’s probably, hours-wise, the craziest day’s work, if you can call it a day, I’ve ever, ever done. Fluidity, accuracy, intelligence, humor—all these things might be very odd today. I don’t really know who I am.”
On his crazy Cumberbitches: “I’m glad I’m bringing a ray of sunshine to an otherwise dull day, being imagined eating fritters shirtless. But, I don’t know, it makes me giggle. I don’t look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘Yeah, absolutely! I see what they’re saying!’ I see all my faults and everything that I’ve always seen as my faults.”
His marriage to Sophie, and his son Christopher (nicknamed Kit): “There are people who believe that my wife is a P.R. stunt and my child is a P.R. stunt. I think really it’s to do with the idea that the ‘Internet’s boyfriend’ can’t actually belong to anyone else but the Internet. It’s impossible he belongs to anyone but me. And that’s what stalking is. That’s what obsessive, deluded, really scary behavior is.”
His near-death experience in 2004: “I was definitely more impatient to live a life less ordinary. I wanted to swim in the sea that I saw the next morning. If you feel you’re going to die, you don’t think you’re going to have all those sensations again—a cold beer, a cigarette, the feel of sun on your skin. All those hit you as firsts again. It is, in a way, a new beginning. But we were on our way back from the first weekend of a scuba-diving training course, so it wasn’t as if I was insular before that. I think it just made me run at it a bit more recklessly.”
His next adventure: “It’s a sappy answer, but the truth is I want to seek some thrills at home.” He met Hunter almost two decades ago, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but it took them years to get together. After a courtship that they miraculously managed to keep out of the tabloids, they married Valentine’s Day 2015 on the Isle of Wight. Hunter was pregnant with Kit, who was born that June, two weeks before Cumberbatch began rehearsals for Hamlet. He has since given up motorbiking, to say nothing of jumping out of airplanes. “Having a baby—it’s massive,” he says. “And on a very unexpected level. Suddenly I understood my parents much more profoundly than I ever had before.” Fatherhood gave him counter-intuitive insight into the most challenging role in the theatrical canon. “I was expecting, with Hamlet, that it might be a hindrance to be a father, because it’s all about being a son. But it’s the opposite. You understand much more about being a son, becoming a father.”
“There are people who believe that my wife is a P.R. stunt and my child is a P.R. stunt.” More than that, actually. There are people who believe that Sophie was never pregnant, that Kit is a stunt baby and more. There is a level of delusion and creepiness around the Cumberfandom, although I’ll say one thing in defense of some of the fans: the whole fiancée rollout was shady as hell. For real. I think even Benedict knows that now? As for the rest of it… Kit Cumberbatch is an adorable name for a baby.
Photos courtesy of Vanity Fair.
