Benedict Cumberbatch (18 page)

Another of Cumberbatch’s projects to be filmed in the United States was another adaptation.
August: Osage County
had been a Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning stage drama written by Tracy Letts, and transferred to the screen with a cast that included Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep. Centred round the family of an alcoholic father (Chris Cooper), even while it was being made, it was already being talked about as a possible Oscar winner in 2014. Cumberbatch, who would co-star as Charles Aiken, had first met Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes. Star-struck, he found it surreal to discover that she was a
Sherlock
fanatic, as was Ted Danson. He was then given some advice on ‘how to handle all this’… from George Clooney. It just didn’t seem real – hanging around superstars he had been watching on the screen since childhood. He would wobble and freeze during one scene of
August: Osage County
: ‘We had one scene around the table with Meryl, and I just couldn’t act. I was in awe of her. She is spellbinding to watch.’ The film clearly had potential to win many awards, the first coming in October 2013 at the Hollywood Film Awards, in which it
won the Ensemble Acting prize. More prizes seemed sure to come its way.

Benedict Cumberbatch had begun a hectic 2013 with yet another film shoot, one which would open before either
August: Osage County
or
12 Years a Slave. The Fifth Estate
was to be the second Cumberbatch film with a connection to Steven Spielberg, whose DreamWorks company were making it. He had landed the part in October 2012. It would focus on the controversial exploits of the Australian Julian Assange, who had founded the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks in 2006, but since June 2012 had been living under sanctuary at the Ecuador Embassy in London in the light of two controversies. At the time of writing, he remains a wanted man in Sweden for sexually assaulting two women, while the US authorities are also still trying to extradite him for leaking hundreds of confidential and classified documents on his website for public consumption, material which had originated from military and international government sources.

The Fifth Estate
was based on a book called
Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website
, written by the hacker Daniel Domscheit-Berg. James McAvoy was originally slated to play him, until filming commitments on the
X Men
film,
Days of Future Past
, made him pull out. He was replaced by Daniel Bruhl, who had risen to prominence in the Quentin Tarantino 2009 movie,
Inglourious Basterds
.

Filming on
The Fifth Estate
began in early 2013 in Iceland, where WikiLeaks had been launched, seven years earlier. The day before the cameras started rolling, Cumberbatch received a lengthy email from the man he was playing: Julian Assange himself. ‘It was a very considered, thorough, charming and intelligent account of why he thought it was morally wrong for me to be part of something he thought was going to be damaging in real terms, not just to perceptions but to the reality of the outcome for himself. He characterised himself as a political refugee, and with [Bradley] Manning awaiting trial, and other supporters of WikiLeaks who have been detained or might be awaiting detention, and the organisation itself – all of that being under threat if I took part in this film.’

In his letter to Cumberbatch, Assange had described the book that the filmmakers had chosen to adapt as ‘deceitful’ and ‘toxic’: ‘I believe it will distort events and subtract from public understanding. It does not seek to simplify, clarify or distil the truth, but rather it seeks to bury it.’ He went on to say that although he believed the actor was ‘a decent person, who would not naturally wish to harm good people in dire situations’, nonetheless Cumberbatch would be ‘used, as a hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth in order to assassinate it. In the end, you are a jobbing actor who gets paid to follow the script, no matter how debauched.’

Cumberbatch stood firm and shot back an email of his own, stressing the film was furthering a debate and not casting judgement. ‘This is not documentary, this is not a legally admissible piece of evidence… It’s a starting point,
that should both provoke and entertain…’ The claim that he was a ‘hired gun’ especially stung him, though: ‘He accuses me of being a “hired gun” as if I am an easily bought cipher for right-wing propaganda. Not only do I NOT operate in a moral vacuum but this was not a pay day for me at all. I’ve worked far less hard for more financial reward.’ Cumberbatch had been driven by integrity, not by celebrity or money, to work on
The Fifth Estate
, but he still acknowledged that the correspondence with Assange had made him truly analyse his motives for accepting the lead role in the first place. ‘It gave me real cause for concern… it galvanised me into addressing why I was doing this movie.’

But he believed his motives were good ones: he believed in civil liberties, democracy, and the rights of the general public to question those in charge. He had also felt compelled to explore the controversial character of Assange: ‘I wanted to create a three-dimensional portrait of a man far more maligned in the tabloid press than he is in our film, to remind people that he is not just the weird, white-haired Australian dude wanted in Sweden, hiding in an embassy behind Harrods.’

The film’s director Bill Condon, previously at the helm of two
Twilight
movies, agreed it was a discursive piece of work about the impact of WikiLeaks, and how information was spread in the digital age: ‘This film won’t claim any long view authority on its subject, or attempt any final judgment. We want to explore the complexities and challenges of transparency in the information age and, we hope, enliven and enrich the conversations WikiLeaks has already provoked.’

As ever, Cumberbatch was striving to understand Assange’s qualities and failings in a rounded character study, rather than branding him good or evil. He elaborated: ‘I said, listen, this film is going to explore what you achieved, what brought you to the world’s attention, in a way that I think is nothing but positive. I’m not acting in a moral vacuum. Whatever happens, I want to give as much complexity and understanding of you as I can.’

To help him get this right, he had conducted plenty of background research. He felt the key to Assange partly lay in his difficult childhood: ‘To have been a child in a
single-mother
relationship, being pursued around the country by an abusive stepfather who was part of a cult – to be taken out of any context where he could discover who he was in relation to other people – well, to then become a teenage hacktivist, and evolve into a cyber-journalist, to me makes perfect sense. And he’s still a runaway today – he can’t form those human relationships that other organisations have.’

Assange continued to be unhappy with the concept of the film. Via videolink from his refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy, he detailed why to a gathering of students at the Oxford University Union.

‘It is a lie upon lie. The movie is a massive propaganda attack on WikiLeaks and the character of my staff.’

Cumberbatch persisted with the idea of a meeting in person. Assange refused, but the email correspondence continued. ‘I wanted to give a fair account of him,’ the actor told
Time Out
. ‘The moral responsibility was very much part of the job. He was having none of it as far as a meeting goes.
He felt that a meeting would condone a film he felt was too poisonous an account. He got hold of an old script and all sorts of issues blew up when we were filming. We had a discussion, though, which was good. If Julian is feeling that way, politically he’s right not to let [a meeting] happen, because it would be like a blessing.’ All the same, when Assange eventually saw footage of Cumberbatch’s performance in the film, he was unimpressed with his attempt at an Australian drawl. ‘We’re all used to foreign actors trying to do Australian accents, and when you hear a Brit trying to do your own accent, I can’t tell you how grating it is.’

The filmmaker Oliver Stone, who did manage to secure a meeting with Assange at the Embassy, took a dim view of both the prospect of
The Fifth Estate
and a documentary called
We Steal Secrets
, made by Alex Gibney. He said that the film was likely to be ‘unfriendly’ and went on: ‘I don’t think most people realize how important WikiLeaks is and why Julian’s case needs support. Julian Assange did much for free speech and is now being victimised by the abusers of that concept.’

Later, Cumberbatch would tell
New York Magazine
a little more about his encounter with Assange. ‘He asked me not to do it, and I said to him, “Well, somebody is going to do it, wouldn’t you rather it’s someone who has your ear, who could steer the film to a place that’s more accurate or balanced?” The tabloid image of him, what he fears is going to be promoted – that weird, white-haired guy wanted for rape – is so far from what he did.’ To his mind, however you
viewed the man, he had provided ‘a massive service, to wake us up to the zombie-like way we absorb our news’.

The issue of the sexual assaults allegation would be glossed over in the final cut of
The Fifth Estate
. The completed film was intended to be more of a general overview on the divide between the public and the confidential in the modern world, rather than a specific biography of Julian Assange.

Empathy was Cumberbatch’s watchword. He was striving to create as three-dimensional a portrait as possible. ‘I think to try to go into this realm of “thumbs up or thumbs down” is so limiting,’ he said. ‘You want to find what’s human about him.’ Director Bill Condon concurred with this way of thinking: ‘Watching the movie is the experience of being impressed and turned off by Assange every five minutes.’

In August 2013, Cumberbatch made his own oblique protest. Filming was nearing completion on the third series of
Sherlock
in London, and he had a message for some loitering paparazzi. He donned a hoodie and held up a message for the cameras. ‘Go photograph Egypt and show the world something important,’ it read. Two days later, he held up a series of messages referring to the detention of David Miranda, partner of the
Guardian
’s Glenn Greenwald. It was an oblique reference to Schedule 7 of the UK’s Terrorism Act, which gives police the power over passengers to stop and search them at airports.

Cumberbatch had written the following in relation to David Miranda, highlighting his own concerns about the British government’s stance on civil liberties: ‘Hard drive smashed, journalists detained at airports… Democracy?
Schedule 7 prior restraint. Is this erosion of civil liberties winning the war on terror? What do they not want you to know? And how did they get to know it? Does the exposure of their techniques cause a threat to our security or does it just cause them embarrassment?’

The Fifth Estate
opened in British cinemas early in October 2013. One fan of his portrayal of Julian Assange was Prime Minister David Cameron, who viewed some of the film for an ITV discussion programme called
The Agenda
. Cameron described Cumberbatch’s take on Assange as a ‘brilliant fantastic piece of acting… The twitchiness and everything of Julian Assange is brilliantly portrayed.’ He was less convinced by how the film tackled the subject of confidentiality, though. ‘There is an interesting bit when he says some of these documents are confidential,’ he told
The Agenda
’s host, Tom Bradby. ‘People’s lives are at risk, and of course he is thinking of the people who have leaked them. Actually you also need to think about the people whose lives are at risk because they have been leaked.’

Cameron’s doubts about the film were not the only ones to be voiced. Some critics considered it inappropriate that the matter of the sexual assault allegations towards Assange was confined to a brief onscreen caption at the tail end of the picture. Others concluded the subject under discussion was too large and sprawling to be contained in a single two-hour story, especially for a saga that was ongoing and incomplete.

But the most common complaint about
The Fifth Estate
from critical circles came with how it dealt with the character of Assange. ‘The filmmakers haven’t made up their minds
yet,’ wrote the
Independent
, ‘whether Assange is a visionary champion of free speech or an autocratic and “manipulative asshole” with a personality skirting on the autistic end of the spectrum.’ The tendency for the film to lean towards the latter may have contributed to Assange being dismissive of the released version.

The general feeling was that, while Cumberbatch gave a good performance in the central role, the film surrounding him was less formidable, and lacked substance. ‘Cumberbatch is brilliant,’ wrote Mark Kermode in the
Observer
, ‘getting the peculiar vocal and physical mannerisms of Assange just so, playing him as saint and sinner, perfectly capturing his shabby charisma. Yet the film never allows him to show his teeth, withholding not only judgment but also clear direction.
The
Fifth Estate
feels strangely unfocused, uncertain of how to deal with its slippery enigma.’

Coolly received by critics,
The Fifth Estate
would fare even worse with the public, even with Benedict Cumberbatch in the starring role. In its opening weekend in US cinemas, it took around £1 million at the box office, barely one-tenth of the £16 million budget. Lagging well behind the fortunes of blockbusters like
Captain Phillips
(starring Tom Hanks) and the Sandra Bullock/George Clooney sci-fi thriller
Gravity
, it was a commercial flop, and did little better even in the UK. Then again, it was not a subject that lent itself naturally to a populist movie, and not all movies need to be populist ones. Even as an A-lister, Cumberbatch would continue to sign up for all kinds of film projects, not just guaranteed hits.

In between zooming back and forth from the USA on projects like
12 Years a Slave, Star Trek Into Darkness
and
August: Osage County
, Cumberbatch had been spending a fair bit of time out in New Zealand, where he had become an addition to the cast of Peter Jackson’s epic remake of J.R.R. Tolkien’s
The Hobbit
.