HIDDLESTON: I just go home. It’s that literal and metaphorical. To London. When I finished The Night Manager, I realized that, for 75 days, I had lived more hours per day as Jonathan Pine than I had spent as myself.

CUMBERBATCH: It does have an effect on you, don’t you think?

HIDDLESTON: Yeah. You’re putting yourself into this other person’s shoes. The best thing I could have done was exactly what I did. I flew home and I went to my sister’s engagement party. I was surrounded by family. And they were so reassuring. And then I just, I live such a boring life. I just potter about, read books I’ve meant to read but haven’t had time.

CUMBERBATCH: I’ve stayed in your house, remember?

HIDDLESTON: [laughs] Yes. I just potter about and catch up, go for coffee, and read the paper and hang out with my mom and dad.

CUMBERBATCH: You’ve done wonderful work for UNICEF. I’ve read what you wrote about your experience on the fact-finding mission about two or three years ago in Guinea, Africa—that sounds like it was a very important formative experience for you. Do you find there’s also a responsibility that now you have this public voice?

HIDDLESTON: My personal investment in the character Pine was huge, and Hugh Laurie, who loved The Night Manager and had loved it for 20 years, has gone on record, identifying Pine as a lost soul looking for a cause. And by a simple twist of fate, the week before I was due to start The Night Manager, I went to South Sudan with UNICEF to make a documentary about the effects of the civil war that is taking place in that country, even now. The effect on the innocent children. South Sudan is the youngest nation on the planet. It declared independence from Sudan in 2011. And in mid-December 2013, the president and vice president fell into a serious disagreement, and it divided the nation along ethnic lines. I’ve made a documentary, which isn’t yet released, about the recruitment of child soldiers, which is a contravention of human rights. And I saw a country which was heavily militarized, and I asked myself where did these weapons come from? There is so much poverty and desperation in South Sudan, and yet each side is militarily equipped. How did this come about? And I came back from South Sudan having witnessed, firsthand, the violence from which a man like Richard Roper in The Night Manager profits. And I remember having dinner with John le Carré and telling him about South Sudan, about how powerless I felt, how helpless it seemed that this poor young nation and its inhabitants are being torn apart by a civil war. And so, in a sense, Pine’s moral anger belongs to me, too. And le Carré leaned forward and just said, “Use it. Use it.” The world I’ve grown into at the moment is becoming increasingly more disturbing and unsettling. Everywhere there is inequality, everywhere there is division, and I worry about it. I think everybody does. I wish we could be decent to each other. And I’ve thought a lot about whether I have a responsibility to stand up for what I believe in because I have a platform, because I have a voice. There is a red line where you do have to stand up for these children. They haven’t asked for this. And, by the way, I am so profoundly aware of my lack of skill to make any material difference. I am not a doctor. I can’t influence foreign policy. I can’t build schools. I can’t chemically engineer the protein paste that helps people with acute malnutrition. But I can talk about it, and so can you. There’s an extraordinary surgeon called David Nott, who went out to Aleppo in 2013, before it was in the news, and treated children and victims of the war in Syria. It was amazing to hear of his bravery, and I suppose, as someone who’s been asked by UNICEF to be an ambassador, I feel a responsibility to stand up for those children. Because nobody is. So I do, and it’s a delicate balance because I’m an actor. And yet somehow, we’re given these platforms to speak from and I’ve been very inspired by people who have had the bravery and courage to do that long before me.