Bright star
The Times (London); Apr 10, 2004; Nicola Christie; p. 29
How do you deal with playing the leading role in a brief history of Stephen Hawking? Benedict Cumberbatch tells all to Nicola Christie
“Benedict, where do the stars come from?” “Good grief, that’s a really unfair question,” he replies. Surely not. Hasn’t he just spent three months immersed in the role of Stephen Hawking, the world’s most famous astro-physicist?
“OK.” Benedict Cumberbatch takes a deep breath and looks out of the window at the universe for inspiration. “The stars come from a configuration of gases, compound gases, that are burning at an incredibly high temperature and they come together through a supernova.”
Bravo! For a “rather stupid actor who is not a physicist”, playing a young Stephen Hawking proved something of a challenge. He had to develop a funny walk and talk, and get his head around the lines that a young Hawking would have delivered during his early years at Cambridge. “What are you thinking?” he asks his girlfriend Jane as they walk arm in arm after a night at the theatre; “I’m thinking about Einstein and relativity.” She still goes on to marry him.
But at this stage we are witnessing a young man who has just discovered that he has motor neurone disease and in all likelihood will be dead in two years’ time.
Amazing to think that Hawking is still writing and working at the age of 62, and on his second marriage - happily, one can only assume, given that no case is being prosecuted, despite recent allegations of abuse.
Considering that A Brief History of Time has been on the bestseller lists for almost as long as the Earth has revolved around the Sun, there should be a big audience for this BBC drama. Even those not able to follow Hawking’s fascination with the universe will delight in Cumberbatch’s joyful, energised performance. He offers us a young student on the cusp of life, an intense and concentrated young soul who at times is about to explode with the passion that he has for the universe, and his need to understand it. Aside from capturing the nuances of this unique, exploring mind, Cumberbatch was faced with the the task of illustrating a body that is gradually being wrecked by disease.
“The voice, funnily enough, I picked up very quickly, and apparently I was the first in the audition to give it a crack. It was quite clearly written in the script - it’s slightly like the atonal palate of a deaf person because the soft palate goes, the tonal variation goes, the tongue loses its elasticity so it’s very vowelly, the consonants go. It’s like me when I’m very very hungover, really.”
Pacing the onset of symptoms while still retaining credibility of character was not easy. “It started off in a silly kind of mathematical way. I thought I’d give it five stages, so that the viewer would know where we were through the walk and talk. We specifically chose certain symptoms to emphasise, which does actually happen; one day the speech would be a lot worse than the fine motor neurone skills.”
One of the best examples comes when the struggling young physicist hurls himself on to the dancefloor. He can’t jump about in the usual student fashion, and the cause of the frustration is not because his mate has just pulled the girl he wanted. No, it’s steady states theory and not so steady states in practice that are fuelling this unique pagan display.
The role is a big step up for Cumberbatch, who previously had a part in Spooks and played Freddy in Tipping the Velvet - “I was the boy that turned a girlfriend into the most celebrated lesbian on television. I got so much stick for that.” But he pulls it off with honours.
You will notice, for instance, that Cumberbatch’s face breaks into a slowly delivered smile which confirms the time he spent with Hawking at his home in Cambridge. Cumberbatch also took away more from his association with Hawking than just facial tics. He learnt “that life’s very precious. You’ve got to give it 120 per cent. Just celebrate the fact that we’re alive and enjoy it”.
Hawking, Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm
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