petergirl
Интервью №3 - Бенедикт Камбербетч и Мартин Фриман в утренней программе Эндрю Марра на BBC1 25 июля 2010 (в день премьеры первого сезона "Шерлока")
Marr: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective stories have sold by the many, many million over the years, but Sherlock Holmes has also been, uh, more than an international publishing phenomenon. The pipe-smoking detective and his assistant, Watson, have been portrayed in dozens of films, plays, TV series. Usually very authentic Edwardian hansom cabs, pea soup fog, all of that kind of stuff. Well, get ready for something rather different.
Sherlock: I’m a consulting detective. Only one in the world. I invented the job.
Marr: The new felevision Sherlock Holmes is a borderline sociopath, charging around modern-day London. It's still a two-man job, though. And Dr Watson is as vital and shrewd as ever. He's just back from the war in Afghanistan. Both actors, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, are well-known award-winning performers in their many other fields as well. Welcome to you both.
Freeman: Thank you.
Cumberbatch: Thank you.
Marr: Um, this is going to shock people, isn't it? Who think that they know their Sherlock Holmes. You are very, very different. You don't smoke for a start.
Cumberbatch: I don't smoke. No. But, I think, you know, he is an obsessive, he is exceptionally brilliant and charming and I think there is, uh, a vast amount for fans of the original Conan Doyle novels to enjoy. The references from the two brilliant writers, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, who originated the idea of modernising him, have littered, uh, both or all three, in fact, episodes with detail, which is directly transposed from the books, so... And the basic premise, the set-up, the relationship, the house, um, some of the other characters, Mrs Watson... Uh, Mrs Watson?
Freeman (laughs): Yeah.
Cumberbatch: Plot giveaway. Mrs Hudson, uh, who else, who else?
Freeman: Lestrade.
Cumberbatch: Lestrade, um...
Marr: Yeah, lots of them. We're gonna see a very short clip of it, so people will get some idea of what we're talking about.
John: That’s a skull.
Sherlock: Friend of mine. When I say ‘friend’ ...
Mrs. Hudson: What do you think, then, Doctor Watson? There’s another bedroom upstairs if you’ll be needing two bedrooms.
John: Of course we’ll be needing two.
Mrs. Hudson: Oh, don’t worry; there’s all sorts round here. Mrs Turner next door’s got married ones. Oh, Sherlock. The mess you’ve made.
Marr: Well, as you can see, it's quite funny and there is this running gag about two men sharing a house together.
Freeman: Yeah.
Marr: Of course, would not have occurred to Edwardians. Um, but it has to be dealt with.
Freeman: Oh, I guess. I suppose. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it never occurred to me until we were sort of in the making of it. And people were referring to the fact that, there's this, you know, people have written books about whether Holmes and Watson are gay and what their relationship is. So, we sort of allude to that.
Cumberbatch: Uh...
Marr: And it's quite dark, I mean, it's, it's got some good dark aspects to it. You are... You've come back from the Afghanistan. As the original Watson had come back from the Second Afghan War.
Freeman: As the original, yeah, yeah, yes.
Marr: But you've got post-traumatic stress syndrome which certainly...
Freeman: I have...
Marr: They didn't have it in the 1880s.
Freeman: No. That wasn't invented then. Um, and in the same way that the original books were all done, you know, were all written, so to speak, by Watson. It was all his diary entries and his version of, of the events of the cases, so, now my Watson has been, uh, advised by his therapist to write a blog in order to get his post-traumatic stress disorder out, so, um, so I write up the cases and so that's the way that we sort of are able to refer to them in the future.
Marr: And when you're, um, doing your Sherlock Holmes, Benedict, I mean, presumably, you've read a fair amount of Arthur Conan Doyle to prepare for it.
Cumberbatch: Yes. I did. And I did read some during as well and I think that was the safer thing to do rather than looking back to the brilliant Brett or Rathbone, um, or more recent, Downey Jr versions. Because what we are doing is obviously bringing it into the 21 st century and whilst those are superlative, um, portrayals of him in his Victorian guise, I needed to find something original as well as the source material and there's, there's an awful lot of description about his, his physical movement, his poise, and this rather sort of abstracted ethereal other-worldly quality to him, which Conan Doyle colours beautifully in the book. So it was a great template for an actor to use to, to go back to every now and then, I think.
Marr: And he's a slightly scary...
Cumberbatch: They're great stories to read...
Marr: They are great stories but he's a slightly scary man as well, isn't he?
Cumberbatch: Yes, he is.
Marr: I mean, you say he's charming, but there's something about him, which is...
Cumberbatch: Well, he is bordering on the sociopathic. He's slightly, you know, there is something very dangerous in his obsession and he takes, I think, both Watson and him into, into a very dangerous realm of London where everything opens up into a warzone, I mean, it is a battle. And, uh, I think that's part of the attraction that they have to each other is that I offer Watson a way back into life which is a little bit more interesting than his normal treatment.
Freeman: Yeah.
Marr: Yeah. Yeah.
Freeman: Mmm.
Marr: I was very interested in your role in this, Martin, because a lot of people still think of you really through The Office, which was your great breakthrough role and this is a very, very, this is a much graver, darker kind of role. I just wanted...
Freeman: Yeah.
Marr: Which must be attractive.
Freeman: Yeah, it is. I mean, I think, you know, every actor that we speak to or hear of wants to play sort of dark, occasionally they'll play villains or whatever, um, and even though Watson's obviously not a villain he's, yeah, he's got a serious side to him. And I'm, you know, I mean, to be honest, I've been playing that sort of thing on and off anyway, it's just that this has kind of got, thank God, it's got a spotlight being shone on it.
Marr: And I gather, it was, it was an absolute nightmare to make, however.
Freeman (laughs) : It wasn't a nightmare, it was cold.
Cumberbatch: It was cold. Yeah, it was a lot of fun to make.
Freeman: Yeah.
Cumberbatch: But hard work and very, very cold.
Marr: You got pneumonia, didn't you?
Cumberbatch: Yeah, I did, I did. That proves, you know, it's a secondary infection, so that proves, I was having too much time with the flu to really take care. And it just, it sort of snowballed from there, but it didn't stop us. And we genuinely did have a very, very good time making it.
Marr: There's a lot of...
Cumberbatch: We had a Welsh crew and, you know, it was great fun to make it.
Freeman: It was, yeah.
Cumberbatch: It was fantastic.
Marr: There's a lot of, um, sort of buzz in the papers already about this, and I get the sense that it's going to be a great success. But, um, which... It's three relatively long episodes. Do you think there's going to be more?
Freeman: I hope so.
Cumberbatch: I hope so.
Marr: I really hope so. Because as you said, there are so many stories...
Cumberbatch: It's a question for Jay Hunt and Ben Stephenson and the other grown-ups upstairs, but I, I really do hope so. And I hope audiences take to it this, this evening and, uh, we'll see from there really.
Marr: Yeah, yeah.
Cumberbatch: Yeah.
Freeman: It's certainly been set up with a view to doing more.
Cumberbatch: Absolutely, yeah.
Freeman: Yeah, we'll be up for it.
Marr: Well, people are going to get a chance to see lots of both of you in this. A little bit of The Office think, before we finish. Can we just have a little bit of that, please?
Gareth: You can't tell me what to do.
Tim: I'm team leader. Well, actually, Gareth, I'm senior sales rep so, yes, I can.
Gareth: Uh, team leader beats senior sales rep...
Tim: No, no, no. It doesn't. My job title actually means something, Gareth. Yeah, uh, I got a pay rise, I'm on a new scale, team leader don't mean anything, mate.
Gareth: Excuse me. It means I'm leader of the team.
Tim: No, it doesn't. It's a title someone has given you to get you to do something that they don't want to do for free. Right?
Marr: It's astonishing looking at it. Everybody in that, in that show has gone, you know, spiralling off to do all sorts of extraordinary things.
Freeman: Yeah, I know. It was a very, it was a very happy band. We were, yeah.
Marr: Yeah.
Freeman: It was, it was, uh, lucky, you know, once in a lifetime...
Marr: And you, you are also, I should say, Benedict, on stage at the moment with After the Dance which has been, I think, probably the biggest stage success, certainly in critical terms of the year so far in London, the Terence Rattigan play.
Cumberbatch: It's going on, it's going on very well. It's a, it's a, it is an undiscovered or lost masterpiece and he, he first put it on in the actual time of the setting of the play and I think it just turned people off because being on the eve of the Second World War people wanted a, a light joke and a song to sing, and it's a very detailed, beautiful portrayal of a generation on the turn and an entire society on the turn and...
Marr: It is as it were, the austerity generation versus the sort of...
Cumberbatch: Yeah, it's the bright young people and things, as they're known, and meeting the more earnest, driven and morally-focused younger generation, who realise that this, this sort of society of apathy or self-indulgence is creeping us further and further into trouble.
Marr: Well, so, there's a bit of, bit of, reference. And of course, he had the terrible, terrible bad luck to open just as the Second World War was also opening which didn't help it.
Cumberbatch: Exactly.
Marr: Anyway, uh, good luck to both of you. I'm sure it's going to go very, very well. Thank you very much indeed for coming in.
Cumberbatch: Pleasure.