Benedict Cumberbatch’s new thriller series, Eric starring alongside Now and Then star Gaby Hoffmann has recently made its Netflix debut. The show has claimed a 71% score on Rotten Tomatoes as it has been showered with decent reviews. Cumberbatch plays a puppeteer named Vincent whose son went missing on his way to school. The actor revealed that he learned puppeteering for the show.
Benedict Cumberbatch Learned Puppeteering For Eric
Benedict Cumberbatch with Eric. Image Credit: Netflix
Vincent created his puppet show Good Day Sunshine and Benedict Cumberbatch revealed that he learned the necessary skill set to handle puppets for the entire series. In a chat with Comingsoon.net, the Marvel star said that he was over the moon learning the craft. “Joyous. Joy of joys,” he said of learning to puppeteer.
For Cumberbatch, it’s just “one of those things. As a 47-year-old adult, you just kind of go, ‘Thank God I’m an actor, and I get to have an excuse to learn to do this.’” The actor realistically analyzed the possibility of learning the craft in a scenario where he wasn’t an actor. “How else would it be possible for me to have that kind of expertise at my disposal to try and give authenticity to those moments?”
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The actor further complemented the lead puppeteer in Eric, Olly Taylor. “To be working opposite someone as talented as, uh, as Olly [Taylor] was inside the suit was really important and phenomenal and inspiring.” Cumberbatch added that Olly Taylor is a great actor, “but he’s also an extraordinary manipulator of this medium. The combination meant that it was a real thing for me, and it wasn’t an awkward thing.”
Still, it was not an easy job to operate a giant puppet but the team behind it has wonderfully handled it. “It was a wonderful aspect of the job,” Cumberbatch concluded.
Getting Into Vincent’s Psyche
Benedict Cumberbatch as Vincent in Eric. Image Credit: Netflix
Cumberbatch understood the essence of his character in the show after reading the script, “this is a real thing for people who have a psychotic split,” the actor explained in a conversation with GQ. “There is someone else in the room, and that person — or thing, or entity — is utterly real to the person to experiencing it,” he continued. Explaining on the psyche of the character, he added, “And yet the outward presentation to the person witnessing [it] is that there is nothing, and that person can seem incredibly sane, apart from this presence.”
Still, Vincent’s mind is a battleground and chaotic storm inside further fueled by different abusive substances. “But added to which you have alcohol, drug addiction, you have this rudderless, really chaotic mind, who’s so lost in his own creativity to try and reach back to his son that it is a very particular form of that.”
Vincent has created a new world and it is very different from everyone else which in a way is “an idealization of a very non-ideal childhood, and it’s under threat.” Cumberbatch candidly admitted that being invested in something like that “make you extreme in your behavior.”
It is evident in the show that a storm is always in raging mode in Vincent’s mind, he is detached for the chaos, he is toxic at work, and and a lot more goes on to complement the utter dystopian world orbiting himself.
Stream Eric on Netflix.
