Based on a book by Assange’s former partner, Daniel Domscheit-Berg and directed by Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls), The Fifth Estate was made in the face of strident opposition from Assange himself who, in a brief exchange of emails, pleaded with Cumberbatch not to associate himself with it. “He reached out to me and said he didn’t want me to do it and couldn’t condone it because he said the book and source materials we’ve based the movie on were poisonous and hazardous to his situation,” says Cumberbatch when we talk in a Toronto hotel room the morning after the premiere. “I wrote back trying to justify why I thought it was important to bring this version of events to the world and how it wasn’t as negative as he feared it would be.”