There are many things that feel quintessentially English: a cool tankard of ale outside a village pub on a summer’s day, waking up to perpetual grey drizzle, bleating gammon-faced racists and, of course, Pickled Onion Monster Munch. Now, ever since he made it big in Hollywood, we can add everything Benedict Cumberbatch does to the list. The guy just reeks Englishness (which is a bit of a problem when he’s doing a dodgy American accent as Doctor Strange), which makes his understated reaction to finding out he’s been nominated for a sixth Emmy award for Patrick Melrose so perfect.
The story comes via Esquire, who interviewed Cumberbatch after he learned of his nomination for Best Actor in a Limited Series. For those unfamiliar, Melrose is a dark comedy about an Englishman struggling with drug addiction in New York and trying to deal with his history of sexual abuse at the hands of his father. It’s a damn good bit of TV, and in my opinion more than worthy of the nomination, which incidentally ties Cumberbatch with Laurence Olivier for the second most nominations in the Limited Series category.
As such, this is pretty big news. But how did Cumberbatch react when he heard? Allow the actor to explain:
“I was in a car going home from East London where we’re doing some filming for a show about Brexit, and my phone just blew. I thought, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here, is there a malfunction?’ But then I saw, ‘Congratulations, huge love,’ and what not, and that’s how I found out. It was quite lovely.”
Quite lovely indeed!
Incidentally, the show Cumberbatch mentions about Brexit is currently titled Brexit (though we expect that to change), in which he plays shiny-domed Mekon lookalike Dominic Cummings, the political advisor who was the campaign director for the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign. Given that Cumberbatch was and is an adamant supporter of Remain, we can probably expect his portrayal to be less than heroic.