Tag: benedict cumberbatch

Benedict Cumberbatch is descended from a somewhat infamous slave-owning family. Generations ago, the Cumberbatch family owned a plantation in Barbados, a plantation which was worked by slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries. As present-day Barbados continues to cut ties with its colonial past, many in the Barbadian government want a larger push for reparations, especially from the families who owned slaves and profited enormously from slavery and the slave trade. So… it’s possible that the Cumberbatch family will be asked to pay reparations?

In the Oscar-winning movie 12 Years a Slave, Benedict Cumberbatch played a plantation owner to great critical acclaim. It was also close to the bone, his ancestors having run a slave plantation in Barbados during the 18th and 19th centuries. Now, the Cumberbatch clan faces the prospect of a legal battle with the island state after it declared it was seeking reparations from the families of slave owners.

The seventh great-grandfather of the Oscar-nominated star bought the Cleland plantation in the north of the island in 1728 that was home to 250 slaves until the abolition of slavery more than 100 years later. The slave plantation is reported to have made the Cumberbatch family a small fortune. Now the government of Barbados is cranking up its fight for reparations from the ancestors of slave-owning families.

Richard Drax, a Conservative MP, who has inherited his family’s ancestral sugar plantation, is under huge pressure to hand back hundreds of acres of prime real estate on the holiday island so that it can be turned into a monument to slavery. If Mr Drax refuses, Barbados will seek to apply for compensation from an international arbitration court. Any ruling in Barbados’s favour could see the island pursue the wealthy descendants of other slave-owning families.

David Denny, general secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, said: “Any descendants of white plantation owners who have benefitted from the slave trade should be asked to pay reparations, including the Cumberbatch family.” Mr Denny, who has been campaigning for Mr Drax to pay reparations, said: “The money should be used to turn the local clinic into a hospital, support local schools, and improve infrastructure and housing.”

David Comissiong, Barbados’s ambassador to the Caribbean community and deputy chairman of the island’s national commission on reparations, is also agitating for Mr Drax and other slave-owning families to pay damages. When asked if descendants of the Cumberbatch estate would be pursued, Mr Comissiong said: “This is at the earliest stages. We are just beginning. A lot of this history is only really now coming to light.”

Cumberbatch’s ancestors were paid thousands of pounds in compensation when slavery was abolished in the 1830s, a sum now worth in the region of £1 million. The British government at the time took out a loan to pay off slave owners across the Empire, a sum that was only finally paid off in 2015. It is unclear if the family money helped Cumberbatch, who was educated at Harrow School. He is the son of the actress Wanda Ventham, who, he said, had encouraged him not to use his real name in his acting career because she was concerned that he could face claims for reparations over family links to slavery.

[From The Telegraph]

This history definitely gives some extra flavor to Benedict’s insistence that he was never posh, that his parents were merely working actors who saved up to send him to the best schools. The Cumberbatch family not only owned up to 250 slaves, they received financial compensation from the British government when slavery was eventually abolished. Maybe I would feel differently if I was descended from one of these families (on my mother’s side, I’m descended from hard-scrabble German and Scottish peasants), but I honestly feel like: yeah, take that guy’s land, and make these families pay reparations. Absolutely. I doubt the government of Barbados would be like “we’re taking all of Benedict Cumberbatch’s money!” There are so many potential deals which could be worked out, and I would like to think that someone like Benedict – who views himself as a politically progressive person – would be amenable to figuring something out.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar.

Benedict Cumberbatch covers Esquire UK to promote The Power of the Dog, and judging from the interview, he’s also promoting Spiderman: No Way Home. Bendy is in his 40s now, he’s a husband and father of three and he’s matured significantly over the past five years. We all have, the past five years have been rough personally, globally, everything. What I appreciate about Bendy is that he’s not trying to convince anyone that he’s a completely new person, that no one should mention Sherlock to him, that he’s ashamed of all of the crazy energy around him years ago. He just… moved past it. That’s still part of who he is but he’s not that guy anymore. You can read the full Esquire piece here. Some highlights:

He loves horse work: “Loved it. Wonderful just to get back in the saddle.” (“Though,” he adds, “it was a Western, so it’s a different style”.)

He really didn’t bathe for ‘Dog’: “I wanted that layer of stink on me. I wanted people in the room to know what I smelt like. It was hard, though. It wasn’t just in rehearsals. I was going out to eat and meet friends of Jane and stuff. I was a bit embarrassed by the cleaner, in the place I was living.”

He stayed in character throughout the shoot: “If someone forgot, on the first day, and called me Benedict, I wouldn’t move.”

He got nicotine poisoning: There were also a lot of cigarettes to be smoked – “perfectly rolled with one-hand”, as per Savage’s text. “That was really hard,” he says. “Filterless rollies, just take after take after take. I gave myself nicotine poisoning three times. When you have to smoke a lot, it genuinely is horrible.”

Filming in new Zealand during the pandemic: “[Coronavirus] was just coming and coming and coming and Boris Johnson was still going [Johnson’s voice] ‘I’m hugging everyone, I’m kissing everyone, I’m licking door handles. Oh no, I’m not – now I’m in a hazmat suit’. You could see it was going to hit very hard in the UK because of the ineptitude.”

He’s not a vegan anymore: “I was for about 18 months. I applaud people who are vegan and I enjoyed my journey with it, but it [non-vegan food] just crept back into my life.”

He likes working so much: “I really enjoy my work. When I do work, I want to work hard. It has to be worth leaving my family [his wife, the theatre director Sophie Hunter and their three boys] and home for, to do. To make them… Oh, this sounds weird but I guess to validate me not being there. And If I can get away with a new skill and call it work, lucky me, you know? That saves me a few night classes or, you know, time I don’t have.”

His childhood: “I was very inquisitive. I was very talkative. Slightly eccentric, I think. An old soul, as one of my teachers described me. I had a great amount of energy. I was an only child, so I loathed conflict.” That’s an only child thing? “Yeah, it kicks off all the time at home now. Not if you’re an only child. You’re not used to resistance. You kind of avoid it. I still don’t like conflict.”

Why he thinks people still like him: “I’m easy with promoting my failings, and that I’m just trying to do it and fail better, at whatever it is. Life principals. Advocacy work. Privacy. All of that. I don’t know. I really don’t want to say these things because it becomes about self-appraisal and it sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet. But I try to keep a balance of certainty in who I am. And also an empathy for others, to try and be an open human being, I guess. So hopefully I keep everyone surprised and everyone, I suppose, who are that devoted… also people who are dismissive as well, there’s all sorts of voices out there, when you get to the sort of exposure I’ve had, and I’m aware of that as much as I’m aware of the devotion – I think people are loyal to me because, and maybe I say this with good intentions, but I try to improve. And like they say in the old Samuel Beckett paraphrase, fail better.”

[From Esquire UK]

I’m not sure if it’s actually an “only child” thing to hate conflict? I’m conflict-adverse because my parents were constantly putting me in the middle of their sh-t, but was that because I’m an only child? Eh. This is true about only children though: “You’re not used to resistance.” Yeah. We’re used to getting our way and compromising doesn’t always come easy to us! As for the nicotine poisoning… I didn’t even know that still happens in this day and age, probably because most smokers are smoking filtered cigarettes. I wonder if people who roll their own cigarettes are still getting nicotine poisoning? Gross.

Cover & IG courtesy of Esquire UK, additional photso courtesy of Avalon Red.