The iconic British role Benedict Cumberbatch wants nothing to do with: “I’d turn it down anyway”
With the exception of Harrison Ford, who is unmistakable as both Han Solo and Indiana Jones, not many actors are able to take on two truly iconic lead characters in one career and be known for them forevermore. But Benedict Cumberbatch certainly had a good go at joining Ford in that lonely club.
Along with having a name that, brilliantly, you can just substitute any two words into, and people will still recognise it, like ‘Benadryl Cabbagepatch’, he is an actor who, thanks to a bit of make-up, a cape and some snazzy hairdressing, is instantly recognisable as not just Sherlock Holmes, but Marvel’s Doctor Strange as well.
However, he could also have added a third icon to his repertoire, too, and another doctor at that. Some years ago, as Matt Smith was preparing to jump into the Tardis and fly about the place wearing a bowtie, Cumberbatch was reportedly in line to play the Doctor as well. While speculation mounted, he told the Sunday Times that time-travelling while trying to avoid Daleks wasn’t particularly of interest.
Back in 2010, Cumberbatch admitted that he had never really been in the frame to take over the part of everyone’s favourite police-box dwelling timelord, saying: “I’d turn it down anyway. Jumping onto school stages and saying, ‘I am the Doctor’, it’s not where I want to go”.
The part of that statement he didn’t stick to was not saying he was a doctor, because as anyone with even a passing interest in superheroes will know, about five years later, Cumberbatch said, ‘Yes, please, that does look like a very enticing cheque’ to the behemoth that is Marvel Studios and signed on to play Stephen Strange for the first time.
2016’s Doctor Strange starred Cumberbatch alongside Benedict Wong and Rachel McAdams and told the story of a wealthy, rather stuck-up New York neurosurgeon who loses the skills in his hands due to a car crash, only to be trained in sorcery by a mystical master named Karl Mordo.
Despite Strange being something of a lesser-known Marvel character, the movie was a huge hit nonetheless, released in a period of time where thirst for the MCU was arguably at its peak, a couple of years before Thanos crucially snapped his fingers in Avengers: Endgame.
Naturally, the success of Doctor Strange demanded there be a sequel, and so Cumberbatch returned for the follow-up, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, six years later, a sequel that outperformed the first in bringing almost a billion dollars in revenue at the box office, ensuring that a third movie would definitely be required, which is reportedly now in the works.
At the moment, aside from having very public rows with cyclists, Cumberbatch is busy finishing up filming a Guy Ritchie project called Wife and Dog alongside Rosamund Pike and Anthony Hopkins in a drama about a dysfunctional family, and he’ll also be seen in a film called Blood on Snow, a thriller adapted from a Jo Nesbo novel about a hit man who gets hired by a client to kill his wife, only to fall in love with her.
With a career like that, which is keeping him busier than ever, Cumberbatch’s aversion to stepping into the Tardis has been anything but a cause of regret down the line.
