From the Archive: Benedict Cumberbatch on Living with Wes Anderson, Imitating Ruthie & ‘Daddy Pancakes’

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Sky Pop Protein Soda. Sky Pop Protein Soda has 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and real delicious soda taste. Sky Pop Protein Soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Sky Pop Protein Soda now at Target or Walmart. If life is about connections, I feel connected to Benedict Cumberbatch. Rick Rubin, Season 2, Table 4, seated us together at a dinner a few years ago, and I remember it as if it was yesterday, Benedict talking about the food he was cooking for his kids. This morning at breakfast, Carrie Fukunega, Season 2, recalled asking me to find a fishmonger to teach Benedict how to fillet a sea bass for his role in the thriller Blood on Snow and how he passed with flying colors.

0:49J.J. Abrams, season three, texted me late last night saying, Ruthie, Benedict must not be of this earth. Describing him as a limitless talent somehow feels like an understatement. And Wes Anderson, season three, when I told him I was seeing Benedict, described him as one of the great actors of our time. He's like an Olivier or a Gielgud mixed with a De Niro or a Hoffman. That's me. You're going out of here. Done now. Bye. There was somebody here. Who can I put on this podcast? Okay, Benedict and I are also connected by values. We're both politically and socially active. He thinks about the food he eats, the issues of sustainability, fairness, and civil liberties.

1:33He's here with me now in the River Cafe to talk about food and film, family and friends. Benedict is someone I respect, I admire, and I love. That's the real connection. Oh, my goodness. Ruthie. so we start with reading the recipe and then we've got that over the edge and you can read it any way you want okay you can change it you can read okay oh it's ruthie i heard that i don't know if i can read it i try i try to read it okay do you want me to try it i find impression i can also do impressively i feel really cruel no you can be cruel it's okay it's not i'll just cry okay i'll take that introduction back and say actually what a shit yeah You should.

2:15Okay, I'll try. I'll try. Split and roasted langoustines, 12 langoustines, two tablespoons of dried oregano, three to four dried chilies. Three to four dried chilies. It's a bit lower, my total voice, I think. Two lemons. Yeah, that's better. Extra virgin olive oil. It's getting quite Kathleen Turner. Now we're getting Kathleen Turner. Okay. Okay, I'll do it seriously. Okay. Split and roasted langoustines, 12 langoustines, two tablespoons of dried oregano, three to four dried chilies, two lemons, extra virgin olive oil. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C, gas 7. Cut each langoustine in half lengthways.

2:53Sprinkle the flesh side with oregano and crumbled chili in season. Drizzle with olive oil and squeeze over the juice of one lemon. Heat a large tray and place the langoustines on it. Cut side up, side by side. Roast in the preheated oven for four to five minutes. Serve hot with lemon. Yeah. That sounds within my capabilities. You think you do that? No, but you're a cook. I do cook, yeah. I love it. But I love the story of your place, Ruthie. I love that this grew up with the limitations of being somewhere for people to eat nearby. And then you got a Michelin star and blew it out of the water. It's just insane.

3:28Like organic. We use the word organic because we're just looking. We've never done another restaurant. And this one just has grown from being four seats. It's all organic, yeah. It's how you grow. you know how you do you look at you're doing films that way the kind of films you I mean yeah that's the nicest way to do it you just kind of a conversation grows around an artist or a particular story or an actor actors are artists but you know what I mean so for example Olivia Colman and I are friends we have been friends for years season 3 what episode? episode 4 oh she's good she's great she might have been season 2 But, you know, we've been friends for a while, and we said drunkenly every time we met, we should do something together.

4:16You know, it never ever happened. And then some grown-ups had a good idea. And here we are, and The Roses comes out in August, which is fantastic. I cannot wait to see that. I think you'll love it. Because I'm probably the only person in this room that really remembers The War of the Roses. Oh, I do. No, it's side-dives. It's Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. And Kathleen. Your voice double. What? My voice double. Kathleen Turner, yeah. but tell me about it I mean so I'm playing an architect I know Olivia Colman you've already had on the show plays a chef and it's about it's about their relationship based on the original book and then obviously the iconic film with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito who directed it you know it's based on that paradigm of a couple who start with a furiously wonderful beautiful archetypal romance and they're impulsive and physical and they have a family and one person's career has kind of stagnated because of the family the other person is doing really well has a disaster the other one is goes on the up and up and that's her that's olivia's character as a chef and she becomes this huge big deal a bit like you and i'm sure yeah anybody could be bigger than me come on come on there's a lot of space yeah come on and unlike richard mine has a nosedive and it's about then what it's really i don't want to give it away but just the joy of bringing this just the kind of raw ingredients to you because of your life.

5:40And he supports her as well. That's the other beautiful thing about it. He helps with prize money that he's won to start her career. He pulls her out of domesticity and says, you should be doing this for people at large. You can't keep treating us to iconic desserts every other day. You should be doing this and being celebrated about how brilliant you are. So it's a really magnanimous, loving gesture. But it's about what happens when two people don't hold each other in in mind i guess they lose the conversation of the couple and these little things start to build these kind of antagonisms this kind of you know the dreaded word resentment and it poisons their relationship and food is such a central point of talking about poison because obviously it's her artistry it's how she succeeds in the world how she expresses herself how she evolves uh in the story and it's also her downfall it's also what takes her away from family, what takes her away from her husband.

6:36And it's, in a way, also what he uses to sabotage her without telling you what happens. Oh, good. And when is it coming out? It's coming out late August. Oh, okay. Well, that's good. Labor Day weekend in the States, and then just, just, just afterwards it's global. So, yeah. Exciting. It was such fun, and it's gone down very well. It's good to work and have fun. That's what we, that's what we really ultimately, or, you know, what it takes. Well, I think sometimes the fun can be a bit perverse. It can be, the hard work can be the joy. You know, Cary Fukunaga, what I did with him was great fun. And that's not for a while, but we could talk about that because I know he's a friend of yours.

7:12It was great. I mean, it was a three-day punch in, punch out. I was the sort of bad guy at the end of this. Tom Harley couldn't do it, so I stepped in to do it. And I have no shame about that. And that's, again, that's public. And I just thought, I want to work with Cary. It's fun material, shooting in London. And Aaron's in the scenes with me and Eva Green. I mean, what a great talent to work with. And it's a cracking character. It's sort of a very dark, omnipotently powerful presence in the film. And it's a bit like, you know, God turning up at the end in terms of storytelling. So I just had a lot of fun with it.

7:43A lot of fun with it. And a big character in three days. I mean, he wanted to be here today. He said he would come and say hello. Oh, really? I was telling him my love. But he's actually going, he left, I think his flight was at 10.30 to Delhi or something. He's great. I worked with him again in a heartbeat. He got incredibly well. I loved what he did and he was just so brilliant with his crew but with his actors and also at the end of a long shoot to get this thing in three days and he was remarkably relaxed considering what was it like filleting the fish hard and stinky and it's hard it's a really hard thing to do I mean I see them by take three the boys that helped me out were like it's not half bad they were impressed with your you know because it isn't it's I mean it's not easy um and especially when you're acting with your back to one of the greatest and also most dangerous and iconic french film actresses of a generation eva green yeah and i i was like i'm trying to hold the scene with her i've got a camera up my nose there and i'm filleting this fish and i want it to look really good like i can just do it blindfolded you know i'd only had one afternoon trying to it's a big fish and then well you have to come in here and kill some fish for us because you do a film, I've seen it with my friends and it's a family isn't it?

8:54It's an intense crazy family. Really intense and then it's over. A friend of mine said that he kind of felt sometimes at the end of movies like his parents telling him that they were getting a divorce. I mean maybe that's extreme but he said you just felt the family If that's your job that's quite a lot to go through. Exactly, you have to go through every time. But Wes particularly does doesn't he? Wes is, yeah, well Wes is very, there's a lot of repeat custom both within the cast and the crew of Wes's. He holds his team together. And so you feel like you're going back into a repertory with him.

9:25It's wonderful. I absolutely adored both experiences. Henry Sugar was very particular in the sense that it was lockdown. Well, there was a lot of COVID around. Actually, it wasn't lockdown. But it was, what was it, early 2021, I think? Yeah. And it was at the same time as the Power of the Dog Oscar campaign. and I was touring and froing from LA to do two weeks on and then go back to LA and then two and all of my family were in LA because we decided to make a few months out of it and they went to school out there and it was it was just great we had a proper proper life for a bit um there which is incredible incredible and and yet then this job came up I was like oh my god I'm now gonna have to go back to England so it was a bit weird the Swiss cheese experience of me coming and going But it was magic with Wes because he really held us.

10:15And there was an option. You could stay at the hotel down the road or you could stay with Wes in his home. And I went, no, I'm going to go hard on this one. I'm going to go the full Wes. To Snowfield. But it was magic. Rafe was there and other actors were there every night again coming in and out. To be held by him and his family and the people who work in his home and this extraordinary food culture that he adores, There were recipes from the New York Times all the time, your food being carted from London on a weekend, which is just like, well, that's amazing. I think I'll stay here rather than go home for food.

10:49No, he really cares, and I think he does. Great. And it was like film school. You know, after we'd sit down and watch a movie. You have to watch a movie. And, you know, I was very honest. I thought, okay, this is the one time I had never seen, Lawrence of Arabia. I'm just going to say it in front of this Cineast and extraordinary creator of cinema and iconic cinema at that. And we'd be like, oh, great, we can watch it, and it's got an intermission, so that's good. So I watched the rest of the next day. And then we'd get up at a very leisurely sort of, you know, we'd have a call at about 10.30 or 9.30, which was unheard of in filming.

11:21But then you'd go into the set, these amazing Anna Stockhausen creations, which was just like, I mean, like pop-up things with old-fashioned flats that would just fly up into the rigging. And you'd go back, so you'd start walking on the street, and then you'd be in a casino atrium, then you'd go through to the main body of the casino with like 100 extras moving about and doing all their things meticulously, then sit down at a roulette table and talk whatever it was he was playing, Flap Jackal, and then look up at a camera thing that was there. I mean, unbelievably technical. And you were spitting out sort of sometimes six, seven, eight pages in one take, continuous take, and doing it 45 times to get it right once for use in the film.

12:01and incredibly focused hard work and really difficult. And the amount of sort of, oh, can't use that one, can't use that one because I forgot a thing or a line went askew. I mean, there was so much to get right. And you were dancing with the crew all the time, Sanjay, this operator, Bob, who's his DOP, making everything work, but also all the prop and set guys who were moving things, giving you things, all the other actors. It was like this perfect balance of everything. But it was the ultimate Wes experience, and then we'd be done by 4 o 'clock and I'd go home and go, oh, in a bath and then up the stairs, Benedict, it's almost Negroni time.

12:38Are you partaking? I was like, yeah, sure. And then the cycle of good food and film would start. He loves that. We talk a lot about that idea of that, whether it's you or Tilda or Rafe or the people, Owen, that getting the people back. I haven't seen the new movie because you're in the Venetian. It's fun, yeah, yeah. And I was working with Venetia, which was just... Were you in Berlin? That was in Berlin, wasn't it? And that was another thing as well. Babelsberg Studios, the legendary Babelsberg Studios, which I've never been to. Tell me about them. I don't know what they are. So they're huge.

13:07I mean, you know, they're sound stages from before the Second World War. I think they might have even been during the first. You know, Marlene Dietrich's stage is one of the longest stages in the world where Wes built two trains that meet in a huge underground railway scene. And, you know, it's just epic. And the amount of great filmmakers, all the kind of Germans from, you know, Fassbender and Herzog et al. And then you've got all the modern greats like Wes, like Tarantino and Scorsese. They've all come through there. Coming through there. So it's a wonderful, rich history. Do you feel that when you go to a film studio?

13:41Because when I've been to the film studio... It's kind of exciting. It's like Shinichi D. You go to Pinewood. Yeah. You feel that those early films... Yes and no Pinewood. And I don't mean to do my hometown. Well, because it's my hometown. I think hometowns never carry quite as much romances as a foreign location, you know. What about Chinichet? An inbuilt slobber. Did you do one in Italy? Have you been in Italy? I have, but only for a fitting. But I filmed in Rome after that fitting. I touched the thing. And I kind of loved it. It was very ramshackle when I was out. I'm not sure what it's like now.

14:10It was a while ago. And there was sort of grass growing out of the pavement and stuff. And I thought, it's half abandoned, but still a hive of activity. Magic Bellini and Antonio. This is it. This is it. It's amazing. It's going to be interesting what the future holds in this kind of digital time of, you know, volumes. Have you heard about volumes? No, tell me about volumes. spaces like this that can just be anything anything so you just do it in a space and it becomes Rome or it's all to do with how you create uh an environment that's utterly AI it's all virtual reality and so you enter a volume and you have minimal props and furnishing and then everything else is sort of faked around it saves a huge amount of money I've never done it I mean I've done sort of I've done a mocap stage which is where your body then gets your movements get turned into an avatar that gets turned into the character in my case a dragon but you know it could be anything and that's extraordinary but it's like being a sort of tax return office it's really yeah it's really bland it's sort of carpeted and neon lighting and none of the glamour of a set or location but you know you're free like a child in his bedroom just to imagine it all and that's a kind of gift in itself um but a volume i think is slightly different i've never experienced it i met Jeff Bridges and, oh gosh, who was the other actor who was coming out of one?

15:24And they looked utterly shell-shocked. I was a different generation, kind of going, what are we doing? I think that's the thing, generational. It's like you knew it was before, but there'll be a generation who'll just know that. Who will know. I think it's a conversation we have a lot, which is, are you scared of AI? And how scared are we of AI? And why should we be scared? I'm scared because I don't think there's anyone in a room somewhere kind of, you know, overseeing the rules of this.

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17:19When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your favorite at mccormick.com. Tell me about growing up. Where were you born? I was born in London, West London. And my dad had a flat in Kensington, which my dad had since the early 70s. It was like three grand and they're still there. They are both actors. Are they? Yeah, they played my parents in Sherlock. Oh, right. It's quite sweet. That's not their only credit. It's kind of the most relevant one to me, I guess, in my career. But they are wonderful. So you grew up in a theatrical home. Were they there in the evenings? Were they in plays?

17:55Yes, by and large. But yes, when one of them was working, you know, there was a lot of theatre when I was growing up. Mum did a lot of farces in the West End, lots of raccoon-y farces, until I told her I couldn't bear her coming in on her husband and his male assistant pulling his trousers anymore. One more time. I'm 16 now. It's getting really mortifying. You've got to class up a bit. But having said that, I mean, if you could do farce, you can do anything. Farce is great. Donald Sindon and Michael Williams used to do it, you know, in productions with us. They are very... The noise is off. Did you ever say the noise is off?

18:29It's one that I've ever seen. Well, my dad was in the second cast. Was he? And that was the most proud of the kind of farce era I was because I remember practicing. He had this whole bit where they were throwing a plate and he had to either throw it or catch it. So we'd go into the park and instead of him kicking a football to me, I was kind of throwing crisps at him. And he got it every time I saw him do it. But it was magic, that play. But how did that work for life at home? Difficult. I went to boarding school when I was eight. Your parents as well. Yeah, I was in boarding school. Yeah, for a long part of my childhood.

19:00At eight, what was that like? Kind of wonderful when I was eight. I mean, you know, I remember those first anxious moments and watching the parents cry as they walked away. But I found a band of brothers. I was an only child. My sister from mum's first marriage was 18 years older, so she left home when I was, literally when I was born, practically, and was always a best friend and like a sort of elder aunt figure and someone I could always have on my side. But she wasn't there, so I didn't have a community at home at all. And I found it at school. So it was a mixed thing, you know, the initial lurch of like, oh god this is weird where they're going you know but then i had a blast i went there to last weekend it was my old headmaster and headmistresses memorial and it was in a theater that judy dent she was a friend of mom and dad's had opened and i did a little reading at the end and it was like walking through all these proustian madeline kate memory moments just like wave after wave of ghosts and just trees that look the same that I did my first ever drawings of you know playing fields where I first tried to play tennis and cricket and rugby and all the rest and just and the classrooms had changed a lot and the standard of artwork and stuff in the art department was off the scale um it's a beautiful beautiful school called Bramble Tye in East Grinstead and it was idyllic and it was outside of London it was this it was giving my love of literature and food and what food and I'm saying that because I'm here literature and oh amazing memories great Great memories of school.

20:30But everything, sports, culture, music, drama. Food? Not really, Ruthie. No, I said food because we're here and I can hear people in the background, but that would be really disingenuous. It wasn't. I didn't go away going, God damn it, food's great. I came away going, okay, it's just something to eat to keep you going. It just fed you. A bit, yeah. I mean, we had treats, but it was, you know, the roast, you know, Yorkshire pudding was something to look forward to, I guess. But you were in boarding school from? I was in boarding school. From eight till 18. Yeah, yeah. The whole gamut. I have good memories of school.

21:04Do you? And it's kind of rare that people, I mean, maybe more, but I loved my school. And I was also, I went for the last few years. I was on a ranch in Colorado, so I didn't learn anything, but we had it. You were at a ranch in Colorado? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's why I'm not very bright. Oh, come on, Ruthie. But you do rarely meet somebody who says that they loved their school. So that's, you know, good. That's true. But then when would you eat well then? Would you eat? Your mother would cook. So would you come home weekend? And then badly at home as well. Like McDonald's was a big treat, I'm afraid.

21:31I hate to mention those words on this. Yeah, no, I'm empathetic to mothers who can't cook because they're working and have to eat out. No, it was just a treat. I mean, she really could cook, but it was like, should we have a treat? No, I don't mean can't cook, but they were working. Oh, I see. She was in the theater. She still managed to do it, especially at the weekend. I mean, God, I remember her doing an amazing Christmas meal and then pissing off for the Boxing Day matinee, you know, at my grandmother's. It was not even her kitchen with this old oil-fueled Argo, which was just very haphazard, like, you know, read for one hour, three and a half.

22:03And even then it could suddenly shoot up and burn at the last minute. I mean, it was a nightmare. So she constantly had her face in the oven. She had me, she was quite late. She was probably going through the perimenopause as well. So just like sweating away in this kitchen, serving people who were pretty lazy and inept domestically. I loved my grandmother and my dad. And dad would help, obviously. But, yeah, it was quite an ordeal. And then she'd be the one working, you know, literally the next day. What about your father? Respect for that. Dad could do a mean grilled pork chop and two meat, you know, a meat and two veg, you know, peas and potatoes, that kind of thing.

22:39And we had this little grill at home, which was also a rotisserie for chickens. I can't remember what it was called. A rotisserie, probably. Did it turn around? No, it was a specific thing. Yeah, it was like a turn around, but it could also be a grill. But it had a little rotisserie thing on the side. and a little small thing that would fold up. Mum and Dad gave me their old ones. All my heart breaks are moving into my new flat, and I left it outside whilst I was moving other stuff in, and it just went in a communal hallway. Someone took it. I was like, which of these 50-odd flats have taken my grill?

23:06I'm trying to find it. Trying to sniff out lovely grilled food. Yeah, but that's important, isn't it? It's a memory. It is a memory. So Dad coped. There were quite a few sort of frozen stir fries out of packets. They're the baby boomer generation that kind of went, hey, we don't have to prepare or think about the ingredients. So it took me a while to go and kind of go, oh, farmer's market. Where does this come? What's the provenance of what I'm eating? Even though, you know, I was with people who could cook. I mean, especially mom. Home cooking was not done with a lavish budget. We didn't eat out a lot.

23:38You didn't ask me about restaurants. No, I mean, Garfunkel's, McDonald's, you know. I think that, you know, one of my slightly more well-to-do friends and his family. The first time I had had Chinese food. When was that? It's a golden bowl. It's like a restaurant. I don't know if it's still there, near South Kensington. And there was a lazy, is it Lazy Susan, the thing that turns in the middle? I didn't know what to do with myself. I was like, it's not just meat and two veg. It was amazing. And I just fell in love with the idea of tastes of things, little pieces of things. It blew my mind. Did they entertain?

24:12Yes, very rarely. They were very, they are, they're still with us. What are they like? What do they do? Oh, well, Dad's very funny. You should do a podcast with them. You should. They're much more interesting. Yeah, I think so. Can we call them up? Yeah, definitely. Definitely, definitely. And Mum. They sound great, though. Yeah, they are. Well, Mum especially is larger than life, and Dad's a creature of habit when it comes to food and drinking and all that sort of thing. Yeah, tea at a certain time with a biscuit, and then he'd start with either a whiskey or a G &T, and then a couple of glasses of wine at dinner.

24:43Kind of structures your day. Yes, yes. Or your week or your month. I think that was his curse from boarding school as well. And then mum, for me, the kind of routine was the weekend cook. And I learned, first of all, actually with my godmother. And it was all sort of desserts. It was meringues that were gooey in the middle and brownies. And then I remember having a tiny little square Star Wars pencil, this tiny little notebook, which I very diligently wrote down the recipe. Oh, do you still have it? Somewhere, yeah. Somewhere, find it. I must, I must. We have a thing about notebooks here because Tom Hollander, you know, his grandmother, he has his grandmother's, was his mother his grandmother's cookbook?

25:23And a lot of people, and so did, was it Kirsten Scott Thomas? And people come in with, and it's a very beautiful thing to be handed down the memories and what you ate as a way of saying, you know, this is who we are as a family. My mum's mum did a mean stew. I don't think I've ever got any recipes from her though. I don't think I really, I really did learn with my godmother, and mainly with mom, actually, just helping her out in the kitchen. Interesting the way people see, you know, performance and food, isn't it? Whether, you know, people who want to eat when they're in theater. I wonder what your mom did.

25:59She was in a matinee. I think theater is a nightmare for food. Would she eat before? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I can't bear it, because you just, you're eating, you often, you know, have friends in, and then they want to go out to dinner, so you're eating at 11.30 at night or something stupid. Did you always know you wanted to act with your parents? I did. But you didn't go, they wanted you to go to university first? Or did you want to as well? Well, they paid for a very expensive education. I think they wanted me to at least have some kind of a backup. And for a while it was the law. I mean, for a very short while.

26:25After I got some very good GCSEs, everyone was like, oh, Oxbridge maybe. And then I sort of met lawyers further down the line, or people who were at the bar who just went, if it's not your first choice, don't do it. I turned back now, it's oversubscribed, it's peripatetic, it's precarious. You know, that sounds a lot like acting. I think I'll stick with that one. Yeah. You know. Also, my idea of the law was this very kind of romantic notion of advocating criminal law. So you did what you didn't do, though. You did what you did. You know, Rumpel of the Bailey style. No, no, I didn't. I didn't. I took humanities for my A-levels.