Would you trust Benedict Cumberbatch with your secrets? J.J. Abrams did and Cumberbatch felt compelled to blab about said secrets with a rather famous confidant. He confessed as such on the latest episode of The Graham Norton Show.
Cumberbatch revealed the circumstances around his direct leaking link to Stephen f*cking Hawking of all people when chatting on the program. Cumberbatch’s big character reveal in Star Trek Into Darkness was sorted out by fans in advance, but the film made a fuss of keeping the detail under wraps. On Norton, he explained how the Cumberbatch to Hawking detail pipeline came about even with the hush hush nature of the script and how there was only one person worthy of breaking the rules for.
“To one person who I thought deserved to know, and that was Stephen Hawking,” he revealed. “We were into our third margarita, I think, and I decided to tell him and he, literally, apart from the agents who told me the news and the people who were employing me were the only people that were supposed to know. So yeah, I told him.”
It’s hard to imagine not wanting to impress Hawking with knowledge chunklets while he was with us, so who could blame Cumberbatch. Speaking of Star Trek Into Darkness spoilers, if you don’t want the half-decade old film’s twist prodded out for spoiler reasons, it might be best to avoid the clip. For the rest of us? It’s a lovely slice of chat show anecdote magic.
Oh, also this happens later on.
