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
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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.