Benedict Cumberbatch has revealed to NME what he has been listening to on Spotify recently, including an eclectic range of new and old music.
The BAFTA-winning star of Doctor Strange and Sherlock is also known as a music lover, and in a new interview with NME’s Alex Flood, he has shared his most recently played tracks.
Cumberbatch named Elbow’s new album ‘Audio Vertigo’ as a current favourite. “Guy is a friend and I love him to bits,” he said. “And that band is constantly having fun and reinventing himself.
He also namechecked the Polish celloist Dobrawa Czocher and her 2023 release ‘Dreamscapes’. “It’s the most extraordinary use of the cello as a percussive instrument, and everything in between,” he explained. “She uses a loop pedal to create these beautiful, rich, cinematic sound textures, it’s a wonderful thing to bathe in.”
The actor also discussed the process of creating playlists in order to get into the headspace of his characters. “It is a thing of, where is your head at with who this person is, how he dresses, how he moves, what he thinks. It’s such an immediate language, music, it’s such a brilliant non-verbal way of understanding a character,” he said.
He then grabbed his phone to flick through his recently played tracks on Spotify, which also included U2’s ‘Achtung Baby’ reissue, as well as Max Richter, Jon Hopkins, Blur, Nick Cave’s ‘Ghosteen’, Noah Kahan, Lo Fidelity Allstars and the album ‘Songs For A Boy’ by Guy Chambers and Cumberbatch’s wife Sophie Hunter.
Cumberbatch is currently starring in Eric on Netflix, a miniseries written by Abi Morgan (Shame, Suffragette). He plays Vincent, the puppeteer father of nine-year-old Edgar, who has gone missing in New York. Vincent tries to track his son down by creating an enormous furry puppet, which he names Eric, that the kid had been doodling before he disappeared.
The six-part psychological thriller is streaming in full now on Netflix after its May 30 release. Watch the trailer below:
In a three-star review of Eric, NME wrote: “Whereas Sherlock made a virtue of Cumberbatch’s aloof nature, Eric shines an unforgiving spotlight on it to the extent that you cannot warm to Vincent despite his tragedy. Add to this the fact that Eric displays none of the innocent glee one might expect from a show so concerned with children’s puppets, and it becomes confusing viewing.”