Benedict Cumberbatch‘s career has gone in some surprising directions over the past decade-and-a-half. He became best known to the public when he started playing the classic detective Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series Sherlock in 2010. As Sherlock, he was nominated for multiple Emmys, winning Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie in 2014 for the season 3 episode “His Last Vow.” The most recent season of Sherlock aired in 2017, and it is yet unclear whether Sherlock will return for season 5 or if his days on Baker Street are over.

Since breaking out on Sherlock, Cumberbatch has been able to make a transition into film. This has included both award-winning hits and mainstream movies. He has been nominated for two Oscars for Best Actor for his work in The Imitation Game and The Power of the Dog. He also made his way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) through playing Doctor Strange in his eponymous movie as well as other MCU movies. Now, Cumberbatch is in a new horror movie, which is very different from his recent Netflix thriller.

Cumberbatch Says The Thing With Feathers Stands Out From Eric

Both Have A Key Imaginary Element

Cumberbatch explains how his movie The Thing With Feathers is very different from his recent Netflix show, Eric. Cumberbatch plays a father in the Dylan Southern-directed horror-drama The Thing with Feathers, which is about a father-turned-widower who must help himself and his sons grapple with the death of his wife and their loving mother. In addition to Cumberbatch, The Thing with Feathers features a leading cast including David Thewlis, Jessica Cave, and Sam Spruell. Prior to taking on this film, Cumberbatch was in the Netflix miniseries Eric, which was about a father who is hit with grief after his son goes missing.

In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant at Sundance, Cumberbatch explains his role in The Thing with Feathers and how it differs from his part in Eric. He says that the two father figures in the projects are “very different people.” His The Thing with Feathers character is “very insular, complex, fragile.” Despite the connection of their being an imaginary element on screen, his relationship with the imagined element is “different from this sort of relationship with Eric.” Check out the full quote from Cumberbatch below:

No, not at all. Very different cultures, very different people. He’s a very insular, complex, fragile Brit who’s not very outwardly expressive with his emotions and starts to come apart at the scene. So, the flare-ups, his changes in mood, and the temperature of relationships, and the testing of him as he kind of slowly becomes unraveled, is very new to him. There’s the obvious thing of something being made real from someone’s imagination, someone’s experience of something, but it’s held as an enтιтy that’s not just haunting them, and is very present in that flat, it’s also in the children’s experience, as well. So that makes it different from this sort of relationship with Eric. There were some odd moments, like the guy operating the crow in this was called Eric, and I was like, “Okay, it’s getting ridiculous.” [Chuckles] But yeah, they’re two very different subject matters.

Our Take On Cumberbatch’s The Thing With Feathers Role

The Thing With Feathers Will Have To Stand Out

The element of one’s imagination to which Cumberbatch refers for The Thing with Feathers is a human-sized crow that visits the Dad and his sons in the movie. A talking bird standing in for death and grief is not unfamiliar to film viewers, as the 2024 Julia Louis-Dreyfus movie Tuesday had a similar concept. Cumberbatch‘s own series, Eric, saw him interact with the imaginary monster that lived under his son’s bed. Given the similarity with both of these films, it will be interesting to see how The Thing with Feathers manages to stand out.