From the Archive: Benedict Cumberbatch on Living with Wes Anderson, Imitating Ruthie & ‘Daddy Pancakes’

Ruthie's Table 4

In this archival episode, Ruthie Rogers sits down with Benedict Cumberbatch at The River Cafe to discuss the intersection of food, film, and

Key takeaways

Benedict Cumberbatch learned to fillet sea bass specifically for his role in the thriller Blood on Snow.
The upcoming film The Roses features Olivia Coleman and uses food as a central metaphor for relationship resentment.

Main topics

Film production techniques
Wes Anderson's directing style

Notable quotes

I was like, I'm trying to hold the scene with her. I've got a camera up my nose there and I'm filleting this fish.

Conclusion

The episode provides a heartwarming look at how professional artistry

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) This Speaker 1 (0:00) is an iHeart Podcast. Speaker 7 (0:02) Guaranteed human. You're not incurable. You're not broken. You're having a normal human experience, and we have a solution for that. Speaker 5 (0:09) And that solution is our podcast, Free Therapy. I'm Ben. And I'm Speaker 3 (0:12) Kevin. And every week, we talk to leading therapists in the country about relationships, work, family dynamics, and all of life's headaches. If you're trying to get rid of anxiety, you're actually fueling more anxiety. Speaker 5 (0:25) So listen to Free Therapy because therapy is expensive. But our podcast is free. Speaker 3 (0:29) Listen Speaker 5 (0:29) to Free Therapy with Ben and Kevin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:34) If life is about connections, I feel connected to Benedict Cumberbatch. Rick Rubin, season two, table four, seated us together at a dinner a few years ago. And I remember it as if it was yesterday, Benedict talking about the food he was cooking for his kids. This morning at breakfast, Carrie Fukunaga, season two, recalled asking me to find a fishmonger to teach Benedict how to fillet a sea bass for his role in the thriller Blood on Snow and how he passed with flying colors. J.J. Abrams, season three, texted me late last night saying, Ruthie, Benedict must not be of this earth. Describing him as a limitless talent somehow feels like an understatement. And Wes Anderson, season three, when I told him I was seeing Benedict, described him as one of the great actors of our time. He's like an Olivier or a Gielgud mixed with a De Niro or a Hoffman. Did Speaker 2 (1:29) I? Speaker 1 (1:29) That's me. You're going out of here? Done now, yeah. Bye. There was somebody here. Who can I put on this podcast? Okay, Benedict and I are also connected by values. We're both politically and socially active. He thinks about the food he eats, the issues of sustainability. fairness, and civil liberties. He's here with me now in the River Cafe to talk about food and film, Speaker 8 (1:52) family and friends. Benedict is someone I respect, I admire, and I love. That's the real connection. Oh my goodness, Ruthie. So we start with reading the recipe and then we've got that over the edge. And you can read it any way you want. Okay. You can change it. You can read it. Speaker 2 (2:08) Okay. Speaker 8 (2:09) Oh, it's Ruthie. Speaker 1 (2:10) I heard that. I don't know if I can Speaker 6 (2:12) read it. I'll try. I'll try to read it. Do you want me to try it? I find it impressive. I can also do it in person, but I feel really cruel. Speaker 8 (2:19) No, you can be cruel. It's okay. I'll just cry. Speaker 6 (2:22) I'll take that introduction back and say, Speaker 8 (2:25) actually, he's a shit. Okay, Speaker 6 (2:30) I'll try. I'll try. Split and roasted langoustines. Twelve langoustines. Two tablespoons of dried oregano. Three to four chai chai. Speaker 6 (2:40) Three to four dried chilies. It's a bit Speaker 8 (2:42) lower, my total was, I think. Two lemons. Yeah, that's better. Speaker 6 (2:45) Extra virgin olive oil. It's getting quite Kathleen Turner. Speaker 8 (2:48) Now we're getting Kathleen Turner. Okay. Okay, I'll do it seriously, sorry. Okay. Speaker 6 (2:52) Split and roasted langoustines. Twelve langoustines. Two tablespoons of dried oregano. Three to four dried chilies. Two lemons. Extra virgin olive oil. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C, gas seven. Cut each langoustine in half lengthways. Sprinkle the flesh side with oregano and crumbled chili and season. Drizzle with olive oil and squeeze over the juice of one lemon. Heat a large tray and place the langoustines on it. Cut side up, side by side. Roast in the preheated oven for four to five minutes. Serve hot with lemon. Speaker 1 (3:25) That sounds Speaker 6 (3:26) within my capabilities. You Speaker 8 (3:28) think you could Speaker 6 (3:28) do that? Speaker 8 (3:29) No, but you're a cook. Speaker 6 (3:31) I do cook, yeah. I love it. But I love the story of your place, Ruthie. I love that this grew up with the limitations of being somewhere for people to eat nearby. And then you got a Michelin star and blew it out of the water. It's just insane. Speaker 1 (3:43) We use the word organic because we're just looking. We've never done another restaurant. And this one just has grown from being four seats. It's all organic, yeah. Speaker 8 (3:53) It's how you grow, isn't it? Do you look at doing films that way, the kind of films you... Speaker 6 (3:59) I mean, yeah, that's the nicest way to do it. A conversation grows around an artist or a particular story or an actor. actors or artists but you know what I mean there's so for example Olivia Coleman and I are friends we have been friends for years Speaker 1 (4:14) season three episode what episode Speaker 6 (4:16) episode Speaker 1 (4:17) four oh she's good she might have been season two but Speaker 6 (4:24) you know we've been friends for a while and we said drunkenly every time we met we should do Speaker 3 (4:30) something together you know it never Speaker 6 (4:31) have happened and then some grown-ups uh had a good idea And here we are. The Roses comes out in August, which is fantastic. I Speaker 1 (4:38) cannot wait to see that. I Speaker 6 (4:39) think Speaker 1 (4:39) you'll love Speaker 6 (4:40) it. Speaker 1 (4:40) Because I'm probably the only person in this room that really remembers the War of the Roses. Oh, I do. No, it's Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Your voice double. What? My voice double. Kathleen Turner, yeah. But tell me about it. Speaker 6 (4:54) I mean, so I'm playing an architect. I Speaker 1 (4:57) know. Olivia Colman, who Speaker 6 (4:58) you've already had on the show, plays a chef. And it's about their Speaker 2 (5:02) relationship based on the original book and then obviously the iconic film with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito who directed it. You know, it's based on that paradigm of a couple who start with a furiously wonderful, beautiful archetypal romance and they're impulsive and physical and they have a family and one person's career is kind of stagnated because of the family. The other person's doing really well, has a disaster. The other one is... Goes on the up and up. And that's her. That's Olivia's character as a chef. And she becomes this huge big deal. A bit like you. Speaker 1 (5:36) I'm sure. Anybody could be bigger than me. Come on, Speaker 2 (5:39) come Speaker 1 (5:39) on. There's Speaker 2 (5:40) a Speaker 1 (5:40) lot of space. Yeah, Speaker 2 (5:41) come on. And I like Richard. Mine has a nosedive. And it's about then what... I don't want to give it away, but just the joy of bringing this... Just the kind of raw ingredients to you. Yeah. Because of your life. The Speaker 6 (5:53) chef, Speaker 2 (5:53) the architect. Speaker 2 (5:55) He supports her as well. That's the other beautiful thing about it. He helps her with prize money that he's won to start her career. He pulls her out of domesticity and says, you should be doing this for people at large. You can't keep treating us to iconic desserts every other day. You should be doing this and being celebrated for how brilliant you are. So it's a really magnanimous, loving gesture. But it's about what happens when two people don't hold each other in mind, I guess. They lose the conversation of the couple. And these little things start to build these kind of antagonisms, this kind of, you know, the dreaded word resentment. And it poisons their relationship. And food is such a central point of talking about poison because obviously it's her artistry. It's how she succeeds in the world. It's how she expresses herself, how she evolves in the story. Speaker 2 (6:43) It's also her downfall. It's also what takes her away from family, what takes her away from her husband. And it's, in a way, also what he uses to sabotage her without telling her. What happens? And Speaker 8 (6:56) when is it coming out? It's Speaker 2 (6:58) coming out late August here. Okay, well, that's good. Labor Day weekend in the States and then just, just, just afterwards it's global. So, yeah. Speaker 1 (7:05) Exciting. It was such fun and it's Speaker 2 (7:06) gone down very well. It's good Speaker 1 (7:07) to work and have fun. That's what we, that's what we really ultimately, or, you know, what it is. Well, I think Speaker 2 (7:14) sometimes the fun can be a bit perverse. It can be, the hard work can be the joy. You know, Cary Fukunaga, what I did with him was great fun. And that's not for a while, but we could talk about that because I know he's a friend of yours. Speaker 8 (7:26) Tell me about that. Speaker 2 (7:26) It was great. I mean, it was a three-day punch in, punch out. I was the sort of bad guy at the end of this. Tom Harley couldn't do it, so I stepped in to do it. And I have no shame about that. And that's, again, that's public. And I just thought, I want to work with Cary. It's fun material, shooting in London. And Aaron's in the scenes with me and Eva Green. I mean, what great talents to work with. And it's a cracking character. It's sort of very... Speaker 2 (7:50) dark, omnipotently powerful presence in the film. And it's a bit like, you know, God turning up at the end in terms of storytelling. So I just had a lot of fun with it, a lot of fun with it. And a big character. He loved working. I Speaker 1 (8:01) mean, he really, he wanted to be here today. He said he would come and say hello. He left, I think his flight was at 1032. He's great. I've worked with him again in a heartbeat. We got Speaker 2 (8:11) incredibly well. I love what he did. And he was just so brilliant with his crew, but with his actors and also, at the end of a long shoot to get this thing in three days and he was remarkably relaxed considering. What Speaker 8 (8:22) was Speaker 2 (8:22) it like Speaker 1 (8:22) filleting the fish? Speaker 2 (8:23) Hard and stinky and great. It's Speaker 6 (8:25) hard. Speaker 1 (8:26) It's a really hard thing to do. I mean, I see them. By take three, the Speaker 2 (8:29) boys that helped me out were like, it's not half bad. They were impressed with Speaker 1 (8:33) your, you know, because it isn't easy to do. Speaker 8 (8:36) I mean, Speaker 1 (8:36) it's Speaker 2 (8:36) not easy. And especially when you're acting with your back to one of the greatest and also most dangerous and iconic. French film actresses of a generation, Eva Green. Speaker 1 (8:46) And I Speaker 2 (8:47) was like, I'm trying to hold the scene with her. I've got a camera up my nose there and I'm filleting this fish. And I want it to look really good like I can just do it blindfolded. I'd only had one afternoon trying to learn. Speaker 1 (8:57) They're big. Speaker 2 (8:58) Salmon are so big. It's a Speaker 1 (8:59) big fish. Well, you have to come in here and fill some fish for us. Because you do a film. I've seen it with my friends. And it's a family, isn't it? It's an intense, crazy family. Really intense. And then it's over. A friend of mine said that he kind of felt sometimes at the end of movies like his parents telling him. and that they were getting a divorce. I mean, maybe that's extreme, but he said, you just felt the family... It's Speaker 8 (9:22) quite Speaker 1 (9:22) extreme, because if that's your job, there's quite a lot to go through. Exactly, you have to go through Speaker 8 (9:26) every time. But Wes particularly does, doesn't he? Speaker 6 (9:28) Wes is, yeah, well, Wes is very, there's a lot of repeat custom, both Speaker 2 (9:32) within the cast and the crew of Wes's. You know, he holds his team together, and so that's, you feel like you're going back into a repertory with him. It's wonderful, and I absolutely adored both experiences. Henry was... Henry Sugar was very particular in the sense that it was lockdown. Well, there was a lot of COVID around, actually. It wasn't lockdown. But it was, what was it, early 2021, I Speaker 6 (9:56) think? Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:56) And it was at the same time as the Power of the Dog Oscar campaign. And I was to-ing and fro-ing from L.A. to do two weeks and then go back to L.A. I don't know if my family were in L.A. because we decided to make a few months out of it. And they went to school out there and it was just great. We had a proper life for a bit there, which is incredible, incredible. And yet then this job came up and I was like, oh, my God, I'm now going to have to go back to England. So it was a bit weird, the Swiss cheese experience of me coming and going. But it was magic with Wes because he really held us. And there was an option.