Doctor Strange had plenty of important scenes in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but Benedict Cumberbatch has shared that one of these was completely off the cuff.
In an interview with Collider, Cumberbatch reminisced about his time filming the massive hit No Way Home. He shared how Jon Watts gave him the freedom to completely improvise the Statue of Liberty scene where Strange hesitates from casting the spell that would make everyone forget Peter Parker.
“[Jon Watts] is fantastic. He’s got such great taste. He’s very detail-orientated as well. He manages the tone so beautifully, all the time, and yet is still so nimble. Great directors are able to throw aside a piece of script or a big set piece and go, “Oh, maybe that’s the story there.
There was this one moment near the end of the film, where we were really trying to make that moment work, at the top of the Statue of Liberty. Tom [Holland] was having a tough time with the script, as it was before the reshoots. And then, we did the reshoots and I came up with this idea of, to show that I love him, I didn’t want him to make the sacrifice of being forgotten. He was like, “That’s gonna be in the film.” And I was like, “Okay, cool. That’s great.”
Cumberbatch further added that typically he used to be a “canon guy” but he was inspired by Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland completely improvising a scene in Avengers: Infinity War. “To be free with that and to have some maneuverability in it and to be able to improvise, and on such a large canvas, was a real eye-opener,” he added.
The actor recently revealed during the BAFTA Awards that he is currently busy with the reshoots for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which has less than two months till its release. It remains to be seen whether Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange will be returning to fix the holes in the fabric of reality this May 6 or if the already delayed film’s release date will be postponed further.
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