Video of Lindelof discussing Benedict’s performance in star Trek 2
Also added extract discussing Benedict to you tube :-
[Brent Spiner]: My family and I went to London in New years, and we were eating at a restaurant with Patrick (Stewart) called The Ivy, which is an amazing place which is a threatre restaurant. People have been going there Noel Coward and Olivier. And we saw Benedict Cumberbatch across the room!
*pause for audience cheer*
[Matt Mira]: Oh, that’ll get a room going.
[Chris Hardwick]: Such an amazing actor
[Jonah Hill]: *at a girl’s reaction to Benedict’s name* Your face is amazing!
[Matt]: She just Cumberbatched!
[Brent]: That is undoubtedly the biggest reaction I got so far today.
[Brent] So, we saw BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH across the room. He was sitting with Eddie Redmayne. I don’t know if you know Eddie. Anyway, Benedict saw Patrick and myself and he came over to the table and said,
“I have to talk to you.”
And Patrick said, “All right…call me.”
He said, “No no, I have to talk to you NOW.”
Patrick said, “What is it?”
“I’ve just agreed to do the new Star Trek movie.”
“No, really?”
Then he said “Well, is it going to damage my career?”
I said, “Let me tell you something, Benedict. You’ll never work again after this.”
A bubble and squeak came out of his mouth and I don’t know what that is. But they serve it at the Ivy.
❞—
Brent Spiner’s Benedict Cumberbatch story told on Nerdist Podcast 212. (via jettisondown)
http://www.nerdist.com/2012/05/nerdist-podcast-brent-spiner/
from about 36:14
— Benedict Cumberbatch on J.J. Abrams and working on Star Trek (via suddenlyfalling)
Source via @MeditatingNinja and @cumberbatchweb (click for bigger version)
Anjini Azhar with Mr. Zachary Quinto and Mr. Benedict Comberbatch.
Quintobatch
No, qcumber, darlings. It’s qcumber.
hehe, I forgot that. Right, it’s qcumber.
Also, check out other photos from this girl’s imdb(some of the ST cast in costume).
This time, Pegg isn’t the only Brit in the world of Starfleet. Benedict Cumberbatch has been cast as a villain. Pegg is full of praise for Cumberbatch’s baddy, whom he describes as “not just another disgruntled alien. It’s a really interesting… sort of… thing,” he squirms. “Obviously I can’t talk about it.” Given internet rumours that Cumberbatch has been cast as Kirk and Spock nemesis Khan, will this be a very different “wrath of Khan” from the 1982 film of the same name? “It’s not Khan,” replies Pegg, annoyed. “That’s a myth. Everyone’s saying it is, but it’s not.”
Is that misinformation from the famously secretive Abrams camp? “No, I think people just want to have a scoop. It annoys me – it’s beyond the point to just ferret around for spoilers all the time to try to be the first to break them,” says Pegg, a fanboy’s fanboy who wrote an autobiography called Nerd Do Well and who seems to have forgotten that part of the thrill of being a comic book/film/sci-fi fan is about getting as many details as possible in advance. “It just spoils the film,” he complains. “It masquerades as interest in the movie but really it’s just nosiness and impatience. You just want to say, ‘Oh f—- off! Wait for the film!’”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/9285164/How-Simon-Pegg-became-a-big-fish.html
Finally, it’s widely expected, although this is hardly radical news, that we’ll be getting the first trailer for the film just before Christmas. Paramount is launching its new Tom Cruise movie, One Shot, at the end of the year, and our betting is that you’ll see the trailer debuting around its release.
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/star-trek/21425/star-trek-sequel-news-round-up
@ZacharyQuinto @simonpegg @JohnTheCho Ben and Kurt: Thank you guys so much! You are so kind! Did he get his passport?
Spoilers behind the ‘read more’
![lornasp:
How an iPhone Audition Got Benedict Cumberbatch into the ‘Star Trek’ Sequel
No, Benedict Cumberbatch is not going to tell us anything juicy about the top-secret role he’s been filming in the coming sequel to “Star Trek,” the next adventure of the starship Enterprise crew from the director J. J. Abrams.
To make up for this lack of candor, Mr. Cumberbatch, the British actor and“Sherlock” star who is the subject of a profile in this weekend’s Arts & Leisure section, will instead share the story of how he landed the mystery role via an audition he recorded for Mr. Abrams on an iPhone.
We’ll let Mr. Cumberbatch, who spoke from his temporary home in Venice, Calif., take it from here:
I got a call before Christmas Eve saying that they’re very interested in you playing the not-so-good guy in the next “Star Trek” film. Can you get yourself on tape? So I rang some friends of mine – and when I say friends, I mean the top casting directors in England who were all on holiday because we observe this little Judeo-Christian cult holiday called Christmas. Whereas, you know, some kids in this part of town, [circles his hands to indicate Los Angeles]with their Crackberrys, don’t. And the demands were coming in so fast, I was like, This is terrifying. And by the 27th, people were knocking on the door, literally, and saying I’ve got to put myself on tape.
I was down in Gloucestershire with some friends, who turned out to be useless. I won’t mention their names, they’re quite well known friends, a director and a very brilliant actress. Bless them, they were busy with his kid. I then went down to London and begged my best friend there, Adam Ackland. He’s always been there to put out the fire. And he said, “Let’s do it.” My Flip wasn’t working, I couldn’t get any kind of recording device. I said, I’m going to do it on my iPhone. It’s high quality, it’s HD. It will be fine.
And so I ended up squatting in their kitchen, at about 11 o’clock at night. I was pretty strung out, so that went into the performance. And his wife, Alice, bless her, with two children asleep – they’ve got enough on their plate without this actor in a crisis in their kitchen — and she’s balancing two chairs to get the right angle on me and desk lamps bouncing light off bits of paper, just trying desperately to make it look half-decent. Because it’s going to go into J.J. Abrams’ iPad. So we did it, and then it took a day and a half to compress it. I sent it to him, and then I got told, “J.J.’s on holiday.”
I was furious. And then I heard on the day after New Year’s Day – we had an amazing first showing for [the British season premiere of] “Sherlock,” and then he just sent me an email, going, “You want to come and play?” I said, What does this mean? Are you in town, you want to go for a drink? I’m English, you’ve got to be really straight with me on this. Have I got the part?
Indeed, he did.
Loving this photoshoot! Finally some new pics. :D](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m338xkidFP1qdyeteo1_500.jpg)
How an iPhone Audition Got Benedict Cumberbatch into the ‘Star Trek’ Sequel
No, Benedict Cumberbatch is not going to tell us anything juicy about the top-secret role he’s been filming in the coming sequel to “Star Trek,” the next adventure of the starship Enterprise crew from the director J. J. Abrams.
To make up for this lack of candor, Mr. Cumberbatch, the British actor and“Sherlock” star who is the subject of a profile in this weekend’s Arts & Leisure section, will instead share the story of how he landed the mystery role via an audition he recorded for Mr. Abrams on an iPhone.
We’ll let Mr. Cumberbatch, who spoke from his temporary home in Venice, Calif., take it from here:
I got a call before Christmas Eve saying that they’re very interested in you playing the not-so-good guy in the next “Star Trek” film. Can you get yourself on tape? So I rang some friends of mine – and when I say friends, I mean the top casting directors in England who were all on holiday because we observe this little Judeo-Christian cult holiday called Christmas. Whereas, you know, some kids in this part of town, [circles his hands to indicate Los Angeles]with their Crackberrys, don’t. And the demands were coming in so fast, I was like, This is terrifying. And by the 27th, people were knocking on the door, literally, and saying I’ve got to put myself on tape.
I was down in Gloucestershire with some friends, who turned out to be useless. I won’t mention their names, they’re quite well known friends, a director and a very brilliant actress. Bless them, they were busy with his kid. I then went down to London and begged my best friend there, Adam Ackland. He’s always been there to put out the fire. And he said, “Let’s do it.” My Flip wasn’t working, I couldn’t get any kind of recording device. I said, I’m going to do it on my iPhone. It’s high quality, it’s HD. It will be fine.
And so I ended up squatting in their kitchen, at about 11 o’clock at night. I was pretty strung out, so that went into the performance. And his wife, Alice, bless her, with two children asleep – they’ve got enough on their plate without this actor in a crisis in their kitchen — and she’s balancing two chairs to get the right angle on me and desk lamps bouncing light off bits of paper, just trying desperately to make it look half-decent. Because it’s going to go into J.J. Abrams’ iPad. So we did it, and then it took a day and a half to compress it. I sent it to him, and then I got told, “J.J.’s on holiday.”
I was furious. And then I heard on the day after New Year’s Day – we had an amazing first showing for [the British season premiere of] “Sherlock,” and then he just sent me an email, going, “You want to come and play?” I said, What does this mean? Are you in town, you want to go for a drink? I’m English, you’ve got to be really straight with me on this. Have I got the part?
Indeed, he did.
Loving this photoshoot! Finally some new pics. :D
Benedict Cumberbatch in Venice, Calif.
Role to Role, From Sherlock to ‘Star Trek’
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: April 26, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/arts/television/benedict-cumberbatch-moves-from-role-to-role.html
HOW skilled a secret keeper is Benedict Cumberbatch if he readily confesses the easiest method for extracting secrets from him?
Asked somewhat frivolously for information about one of the many coming projects he cannot talk about, Mr. Cumberbatch, the 35-year-old British actor, offered an equally facetious response.
“You could stick a knife in my thigh, and I wouldn’t tell you,” he said a few weeks ago, relaxing on the deck of the Venice, Calif., home where he was staying. But he added: “Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles.”
Deeper still within his head were numerous vital details that Mr. Cumberbatch’s work required him to keep locked away. There was not much he could say about his dual roles as a necromancer and a talking dragon in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of “The Hobbit,” and even less about the part he was shooting in J. J. Abrams’s sequel to “Star Trek.” (“I’ve got to be a complete and utter tease,” he said, more gleeful than apologetic.)
What Mr. Cumberbatch can confirm is that these high-profile opportunities were made possible by the success of “Sherlock,” the television series that casts him as a cool and contemporary — if brutally rational — upgrade of Sherlock Holmes. It returns on May 6 for a second season on PBS’s “Masterpiece Mystery!”
In Britain, where “Sherlock” is shown on BBC One, the series has left millions of fans frantic to know the resolution of a season-ending cliffhanger, which American viewers have not yet seen, and transformed Mr. Cumberbatch (who already knows the outcome) from a well-regarded journeyman actor into a superstar.
And he makes no secret of his desire to see “Sherlock” enjoy similar acclaim in the land of “Mad Men” and “Modern Family.”
“I’m desperate for America to really take to this,” he said. “It has taken it into its heart as a cult thing, but I’d love it to hit the mainstream this time. Because I just think it’s of that quality, and it belongs there.”
In person the thin and muscular Mr. Cumberbatch shares the piercing gaze and sonorous, sinister voice of his Holmes but is warmer and more irreverent. He is a self-confessed motormouth and a relentless mimic who, over the course of an hour, adopted the shrieking voice of an admiring Valley girl; the Scottish burr of his friend and colleague James McAvoy; the synthesized speech of Stephen Hawking, whom he portrayed in a British TV movie; and the rapid, adenoidal clip of both Mr. Abrams and Steven Spielberg, who directed him in “War Horse.”
In similarly haphazard fashion Mr. Cumberbatch has spent the past 18 months ricocheting from role to role, in British stage productions like “After the Dance” and “Frankenstein” (for which he shared the Olivier Award this month with his co-star Jonny Lee Miller); a coming television version of “Parade’s End,” adapted by Tom Stoppard from the Ford Madox Ford novels; and films like “The Hobbit,” “War Horse” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”
Last December, on vacation in Gloucestershire, England, he got the call that Mr. Abrams wanted him to submit a videotaped audition for “the not-so-good guy” (in Mr. Cumberbatch’s words) in the “Star Trek” sequel — and could not find anyone to film it for him.
“We observe this little Judeo-Christian cult holiday called Christmas,” Mr. Cumberbatch said sarcastically. “Whereas, you know, some kids in this part of town” — he circled his hands in the Los Angeles air — “with their Crackberrys, don’t.”
In a friend’s kitchen late at night, an agitated and weary Mr. Cumberbatch recorded his audition on an iPhone — “I was pretty strung out,” he said, “so that went into the performance” — and sent it to Mr. Abrams, only to be told the director was also on vacation.
Mr. Abrams, who saw the recording a few days later and hired Mr. Cumberbatch, wrote in an e-mail that it was “one of the most compelling audition readings I’d ever seen.”
But Mr. Abrams already knew this from Mr. Cumberbatch’s work on “Sherlock,” whose second season drew around 10 million viewers in Britain for each of three 90-minute episodes shown in January, according to the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board. (By contrast, in the United States, the first season averaged 4.6 million viewers per episode, PBS said.) On Tuesday, Mr. Cumberbatch’s work on the show earned him a Bafta award nomination for best actor.
Steven Moffat, the television producer who created “Sherlock” with Mark Gatiss, recognized similar qualities in Mr. Cumberbatch after seeing him play a quietly frightening character in “Atonement.”
“His look is quirky,” said Mr. Moffat, who also produces the BBC’s hit revival of “Doctor Who.” “His appeal is quite intellectual. He’s not conventionally handsome — handsome by any normal human standard. But the screen is very demanding.” Mr. Cumberbatch, he added, is “not ever going to play an ordinary man.”
Mr. Moffat — who met with no other actors for the role — said he saw in Mr. Cumberbatch an actor ideally suited to play Holmes, but also one who was ready for an assignment that would significantly raise his profile.
“Little boys like to be heroes,” Mr. Moffat said. “You get to wear the coat and swagger about, and girls think he’s sexy. There’s a lot of things that playing Stephen Hawking can do, but that’s probably not one of them.”
Mr. Cumberbatch realized too that “Sherlock” would shine a spotlight on him in a way he hadn’t previously experienced. “I knew it would accelerate wherever I was at,” he said. “And I thought, I’m ready for this.”
But the increased scrutiny that arrived as abruptly as his fame made him think otherwise. The address of his London home became public knowledge when he applied to expand his apartment into the one beneath it, and his breakup with a girlfriend he’d known since college was much discussed in the tabloids.
Since coming to California to work on “Star Trek,” Mr. Cumberbatch said, there had been “a huge blogging response to me selling out to Hollywood and dating a model and become a walking cliché. That was nice.” He also discovered a Web site that juxtaposes his facial expressions from “Sherlock” with images of otters in similar poses. He said it was “brilliant” and “fantastic.”
Mr. McAvoy, who appeared with Mr. Cumberbatch in “Atonement” and “Starter for 10,” said the toughest challenge he faced was not the glaring eye of fans or the news media but a self-imposed demand to live up to the expectations of his fellow actors.
“Your peers look at you and go, ‘All right, you’ve got this opportunity and this ability — step up and be good every time,’ ” Mr. McAvoy said.
Even so, he said that for as long as he had known Mr. Cumberbatch he has worked steadily in many enviable roles and “has occupied a position within the industry that people would chop his legs off to get, so I imagine he’s used to dealing with that sort of pressure.”
Season 2 of “Sherlock,” which presents 21st-century takes on the classic Holmes adventures “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and “The Final Problem,” offers Mr. Cumberbatch further opportunity to build on his portrait of the consulting detective as a cocky but not fully formed young man.
Paired once again with Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman), Holmes is drawn further into his rivalry with the archfiend Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott) and meets the mysterious Irene Adler (Lara Pulver), who stirs some decidedly warm feelings beneath the character’s coldblooded facade.
“The most prominent attraction is of the mind,” Ms. Pulver said. “Otherwise it would have literally been an episode of two people wanting to rip each other’s clothes off, and we’ve all seen that.”
Though his Holmes is meant to be lacking in social graces, Mr. Cumberbatch rejected a popular interpretation that the character has Asperger syndrome.
“He’s a high-functioning sociopath,” he said. “He has a general disregard for standard codes of conduct, pleasantries, niceties. He wants to cut to the chase. He wants everything to be faster and better and purer.”
Mr. Cumberbatch could at least relate to this aspect of the character. He recalled an encounter he’d had in January at the Golden Globe Awards, where the PBS “Masterpiece” executive producer Rebecca Eaton taunted him affectionately with a trophy that had just been won by “Downton Abbey.”
He said: “I just looked at it and went: ‘Begone, woman. Bring it back when it says “Sherlock Holmes” or Steven Moffat or myself — someone else who’s more deserving than the second series of “Downton Abbey.” ’ ”
Exhibiting a diplomacy that his Holmes is not known for, Mr. Cumberbatch stopped himself from saying anything more about the rival television series.
“I know too many people who are in it,” he said. “I thought the first series was good. That’s what I’ll say.”
‘Star Trek 2’: ‘Sherlock’ star Benedict Cumberbatch dyes hair, loves J.J. Abrams
“I’m getting my hair dyed at the moment, at work,” British actor Benedict Cumberbatch tellsZap2it, calling in from the set of “Star Trek 2,” the second installment in director J.J. Abrams‘ big-screen reboot of the science-fiction franchise.
Cumberbatch, who returns to PBS’ “Masterpiece Mystery!” on Sunday, May 6, in the second season of “Sherlock,” playing the title role in the BBC’s 21st century reboot of that venerable franchise, plays the mysterious villain in “Trek,” the plot of which has been shrouded in secrecy.
“The movie goes very well,” Cumberbatch says. “It’s very, very long hours, but it’s an incredible job. It’s phenomenal. J.J. brings it. It’s a very exciting set to be on. He’s very imaginative. He’s involved in the details, the acting and all the wonderful ideas he has for capturing stories in a fresh and imaginative way.
“Just the range of stuff I get to do in one day, it’s great. Also, what he’s asking me, it’s just wonderful. I can’t say much nicer than that. I’m basically raving about it, and I don’t have a gun pointed to my head.
“He’s a genuinely good human being, as well as being absurdly talented and popular. He’s just fantastically talented, just in payoffs and thrills and chills along the way.”
Cumberbatch shot “Sherlock” in Wales, but for “Star Trek,” he’s in Los Angeles, sometimes on a proper movie lot, with all the amenities that go with it — such as catered lunches.
Asked if he’s enjoying it all, Cumberbatch says, “Yeah, you betcha. It’s great. I’ve gone up two suit sizes. The character I’m playing, he’s strong, I can say that much. I’ve changed my physique a bit, so that requires eating like a foie gras goose, well beyond your appetite, And, providing I don’t feel too ill, I then work out two hours a day with a phenomenal trainer. It’s the L.A. way.”
Cumberbatch has also gotten a chance to film in the Budweiser Brewery in the San Fernando Valley, which was used in Abrams’ first “Star Trek” movie as the engine room of the Starship Enterprise.
“It’s noisy,” he says. “it’s very, very, very mind-numbingly noisy. It’s slightly like what you’d imagine they’d be playing in your earphones if you were being tortured by some foreign operative. It’s not particularly pleasant.
“And yet, it’s stunning, and it films beautifully. It’s incredible. It’s a working, functioning factory, and production doesn’t shut down for us being there. It’s fantastic, really beautiful.”
But, he didn’t get to bring home a case of cold Bud.
“No, I didn’t,” says Cumberbatch. “I’d like to. No, I didn’t. There was a nice little tap on one of the big, old vats, and I thought, ‘I wonder if I should take a taste.’”
