From director Toby Haynes and screenwriter James Graham, the biographical drama Brexit (airing on HBO and available on HBO NOW, HBO GO and HBO On-Demand) connects all of the dots to illustrate how Dominic Cummings (Benedict Cumberbatch), the lead strategist of the Vote Leave campaign, launched a micro-targeted social media campaign that played on emotion rather than facts to convince British voters to leave the European Union. The result and the consequences of this referendum campaign are still playing out in Britain today, and will have an effect long into the future.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actor Benedict Cumberbatch talked about his shocking appearance in the film, how his friends and family reacted to his hairline for the shoot, why he wanted to be a part of this project, using wit and humor to tell a gut-punching and dramatic story, the shorthand he’s established with director Toby Haynes (Sherlock), why it was important to him to work from within the point of view of Dominic Cummings, watching the effects of this vote still playing out in real time, and the embarrassment of riches he had in his career in 2018.

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Image via HBO

Collider:  Thanks so much for talking to me about Brexit and your performance in it, from wherever you’re currently shooting.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH:  I’m in Prague. I’m doing a night shoot, so I haven’t started my working day. I think I start about 10:30 until 7:30 in the morning. I’m just gearing up to have fun. It’s minus 7 here, and it will probably actually get to minus 10 later, so that’s going to be fun.

I have to say that it’s amazing how just some tweaks of a hairline can drastically alter someone’s appearance, to the point when you first come onscreen in the film, I gasped out loud.

CUMBERBATCH:  If you want to go about your daily life and not be recognized, I thoroughly recommend having a “no-hawk,” which is what I had and the opposite of a mohawk. You gasped. I had to wear a hat for the duration of the film, which was literally glued to my head when I wasn’t on set. I’ve got this amazing photograph album, where I’d take the hat off and I’d take a photograph of friends and family who I saw over that time, including on my birthday, and it was just a wonderful picture of shock, dismay, horror and confusion. It’s the most wonderful array of human reactions. It’s great.

What was your own reaction to seeing yourself like that?

CUMBERBATCH:  I was like, “Well, good, we’re half-way there to looking like him.” I needed to have a good wig on top, to mark out where the hair was being scraped over and where it was going. Once I had done that and the contact lenses, I was happy. I was looking a lit bit more like someone who looks remarkably different to me, even though he’s not that well known to the public. People said, “We’ve cast you, we haven’t cast him. It’s fine. You don’t have to look like him.” And I said, “I think being me, I do have to. I want to step into this person’s skin. I want to feel and look like him. I want to think like him and move like him, and this is part of it. So, I’m gonna do this.” They were like, “Are you sure?” And I said, “Yeah, I really am sure. I have to do it.” But, I’m thrilled with the result.

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Image via HBO

When the possibility and opportunity to play this guy came your way, was it one of those things where you were immediately on board, or did you need convincing to play him?

CUMBERBATCH:  I didn’t need much convincing ‘cause I’m a huge fan of James Graham’s work from his previous stage work. It’s like a thriller. And I thought this guy is intriguing, smart, cantankerous and brave, but he’s also human. He doesn’t want to get involved with this fight that he feels strongly about because of the people involved. And the people involved, when he does get involved, try to get him uninvolved. This drama is telescoping from his very subjective way into it, with the monologue at the beginning, into his campaign and the people who run it, into the opposing campaign, into the nation at large, and that amazing test group scene. All of that was done with wit and humor, at an entertaining pace and rhythm, and it was a really dramatic, and, at times, emotional, gut-punching drama. I was intrigued by the read of it, and then I talked to James about him, about him as a character, about how he sourced the stories and the points of view, and all the characters. I said, “I really wanna do this. Can we just try to make the timing work?” And my agent was really on board with it because of how good the script was. So, that’s how I came to be involved.

And you had previously worked with the director, Toby Haynes, on Sherlock. Was he already attached to it, as well, or did you think he would make a good fit for this?

CUMBERBATCH:  I think Toby was attached. I didn’t produce this, so I didn’t have a say in that. Toby was already very much that guy. I can’t remember who was first in getting into things – whether it was Toby attached first and then me, or vice versa – but he was definitely another draw. I definitely talked to him about what kind of film he wanted to make, out of this incredible story and script, and what the final piece would be. We’ve danced together a couple of times, in our other projects, ‘cause we enjoyed working with each other so much on Sherlock. It was a great fit for both of us. That was another huge benefit to doing this.

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Image via HBO

What do you like about working and collaborating with him? Is there just an easiness, when you know how somebody works?

CUMBERBATCH:  Yeah, you have a shorthand. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s very transparent, as a human being. There’s a friendship there, as well. It’s not just a working relationship of respect, but there’s also friendship of support. The shorthand is the biggest thing. I also knew that he was gonna take this into the realm of not being just a drama of men talking in a room. Especially with Danny Cohen’s cinematography, I knew it was gonna have a visual impact and a style to it, and that there would be an editing, coloring and score flavor that would give it something other than just what it is on the page, which was pretty spectacular. So, I was confident that it would be really good with him at the helm, as well as I would have a good time making it with him.

Regardless of whatever your own personal opinion of Brexit is, did you feel like you had a handle on what it is and what it means, before doing this film, or did you feel like you needed to dig into that to get a wider understanding of it?

CUMBERBATCH:  Well, I always view what I do, as a storyteller and as an actor, as bringing to life an understanding into a character who’s other than you, which most of them are, unless they’re very close to you, which is very rare. For whatever reason, there are differences, so you have to practice empathy. One of the great things about being an actor is that you’re continually getting to learn new things, and understand points of views or life experiences and takes on the world that are different to your own. That was definitely a draw for me. Another part of the challenge was putting my head completely into the mind of a Vote Leave’s head strategist, and understanding both how he did what he did as a strategist, but also what appealed to that strategy and the notion of understanding the mindset of people who voted to leave, which was 52%. So, that was great. For me, that was a very fulfilling experience, and perhaps something that I did more of whilst doing this drama because it was so intensely focused and big, at the time. It polarized people so massively. It’s one of Dominic’s most interesting contradictions. He’s a man who believes in the cause, but not the means of going about getting it. He thinks this referendum is a dumb idea because it pretends that really complex ideas can be forced into simple binary answers. It’s not possible to be black and white, yes or no, red or blue, and come out with something that’s gonna please everyone. To understand that better by playing him was a real eye-opener. I guess that’s one of the things that I like to practice, as an actor. I get to go to places that I wouldn’t do necessarily, in my life. That’s one of the real joys of it, actually, and the thrill of it. It’s not always something that I seek out. It could just be a feeling that makes me wanna take on a job, or a script, or a person involved with it. But with this, it was the whole thing. It was the experience of doing something different from me.

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Image via HBO

After playing Dominic Cummings, did you find yourself liking him, at all, or is that not something that you worry about, when you play a character?

CUMBERBATCH:  You naturally lean in. You become empathetic with your character and you understand him. The thought of liking or disliking him, what are we talking about, Facebook? Life’s a little bit more complicated. I really enjoyed meeting Dominic. He was incredibly generous and open and forthcoming, and was through the production and has been since, as well, when he didn’t need to be. There’s no reason for him to be. That’s just his nature. It’s who he is. So, I’ve got a lot of time for people who are like that, and I treat him with a similar amount of respect. You understand someone’s point of view far better, if you work from within their point of view. That’s a good thing to practice as a human being, in general. You don’t just find yourself shouting from one side or the other, you go somewhere in the middle and say, “Hang on, I want to listen to all these points of view. I want to try and understand something.” The luxury of time that you get when you’re doing a project is nice, so I enjoyed that experience a lot.

This is such an interesting guy because he succeeds in his campaign, but he doesn’t have the reaction that you would expect somebody to have when they succeed in something. He’s such a fascinatingly complex person.

CUMBERBATCH:  He is. The drama is about trying to incite this man back into the political realm that he caused because of his status and the people involved. It’s not about the issue or the ideology. He feels sorry that we’ve ended up in this drama. Reading any of his blogs now, that’s very much how he feels, in real life, and we reflect that frustration. He won, but not with the outcome that any of us or he feels we really deserved. So, he’s complex, but who isn’t? And what about this situation with Brexit isn’t complex? As an audience, you’ll like him or not like him, but I hope it’ll go beyond those binaries. People judge people. Life’s short. You have your friends, and you have people that you don’t necessarily want to be your friends, but I hope that people will see that there are a lot of saving graces to this guy, who’s on the outside of the establishment, trying desperately hard to kick the doors down and do something worthwhile, and give a life to a discontentment that’s been alive for a lot longer than this campaign. He says, “We didn’t create this. It’s been there for years. We’re just using it with the vote, but it’s been there for years.”

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You played another real-life person who really divides people’s opinions, when you played Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate. How do you think that film has aged, in the five years since it was released in theaters?

CUMBERBATCH:  I don’t know. I haven’t seen it since it was released. I’m not sure. I’d have to see it again.

Is it surreal to work on a project that’s so current that you can almost watch play out in real time while you’re doing it?

CUMBERBATCH:  Yeah, it’s extraordinary. This is a historical drama, by the nature of it being about 2016's campaign, and 2015, before that campaign started, and the result in 2016. We open our newspapers and the turnover of events is so fast. Everything is in constant flux. There’s a story and a headline that’s worthy of a new James Graham script, every single day. So, this is very much a time capsule. In a way, like anything in history, and like WikiLeaks and Julian’s story, they do teach us something, otherwise we wouldn’t be telling these stories. They wouldn’t have relevance. It’s fascinating, as an actor, to be attached to these real-life characters, and then seeing their stories played out and the outcome of them. It’s bizarre to do this work, and then to see it tied into history that keeps unfolding.

In 2018, you gave one of the Best TV Performances of the Year in Patrick Melrose, and you also had The Grinch and Avengers: Infinity War come out, and you shot Brexit. Does that feel like a pretty great year for an actor, working in such different genres and getting to really sink your teeth into some cool characters that are very different from each other? Is that typically what you strive for?

CUMBERBATCH:  Yeah, absolutely. You hit it on the head. It’s been an embarrassment of riches, when you get that amount of choice and variety. Of course, some have been a very long time in the making, like The Grinch, and the work in Avengers was a year, or whatever, ago. But to see it all come through, you go, “Yeah, that’s a pretty good crop of work to come out.” I’m thrilled. It’s been a very lovely year for me.

Brexit premieres on HBO on Saturday, January 19th.

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