The 2013 movie Benedict Cumberbatch was warned against making: “We will forever be correlated in the public imagination”
Benedict Cumberbatch might have risen to fame playing one of the most famous fictional characters of all time, but he has proven himself very capable at playing real people, such as Tudor courtier William Carey in The Other Boleyn Girl, in one of his earliest big movie roles.
Since then, he has displayed versatility in embodying a host of famous scientists, lawyers, artists, spies, and soldiers, with one example that often flies under the radar being the 2013 biographical thriller The Fifth Estate, in which he donned a somewhat unconvincing blonde wig to step into the shoes of Julian Assange, the controversial whistleblower and founder of WikiLeaks.
The film follows Assange’s creation of the news-leaking website, as well as his relationship with his co-founder Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who is played by Daniel Brühl, and on paper, Cumberbatch seemed like the perfect man to play the main man, not just because of his immense talent, but because the first major story broken by WikiLeaks had happened at the same time as the debut episode of Sherlock.
Not everyone agreed with the decision, least of all Assange himself, and in a letter written to the British star, the Australian ex-journalist detailed exactly why The Fifth Estate would be bad news for both of them.
“The bond that develops between an actor and a living subject is significant,” he explained (via The Guardian), “If the film reaches distribution, we will forever be correlated in the public imagination. Our paths will be forever entwined. Each of us will be granted standing to comment on the other for many years to come, and others will compare our characters and trajectories. But I must speak directly… I believe you are a good person, but I do not believe that this film is a good film.”
Assange also refers to one of the books used as a source for the film, which he claims was written by “someone who has a vendetta against me and my organisation”, most likely talking about Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website, which was published by Domscheit-Berg in 2011.
In a similar vein to Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin in The Social Network, Assange and Domscheit-Berg started off as partners and friends before falling out when their site got big, which was a pivotal moment in the history of WikiLeaks.
Despite Assange’s protestation, Cumberbatch went ahead and starred in the film anyway, and while his performance came in for strong praise, the rest of the film was less well-received. Critics felt that the movie didn’t know how to deal with somebody as enigmatic and divisive as Assange, who was living in refuge in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy at the time, and it thereby bombed at the box office, taking home just $8.6million from a $28m budget.
Assange remains a fascinating figure on the world stage with many famous fans and detractors. His attempts to intervene in a movie about his own life can be read in one of two ways: a self-conscious man desperate to stop his name from being tarnished, or a persecuted individual with a genuine axe to grind.
