Cumberbatch expands his 'Estate' as WikiLeaks founder

Andrea Mandell | USA TODAY

TORONTO — Quite frankly, it's like interviewing Sherlock Holmes.

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, whose BBC portrayal of the famous detective has ushered him into Hollywood's Big Leagues, has more films nearing release than he has time to talk about. In turn, he's gone full-stop Sherlock, spouting data dumps of information about, at the present moment, his new WikiLeaks film, The Fifth Estate (in theaters Friday).

This interviewer, fairly dizzied at the verbal gymnastics, stops proceedings to ask a simple question: Does he always talk this fast?

"No!" chuckles Cumberbatch, dressed nattily in a gray sports jacket, slowly descending back to earth. He exhales and the air begins to warm in this stale, stark banquet room fitted with two chairs and a rather large group of handlers. "Ask my friends. I also listen a lot more than in these (press) situations. This is a heightened situation for me."

No matter -- the world is listening to Cumberbatch raptly. This weekend, two career-shifting films hit theaters: The Fifth Estate's Julian Assange story and 12 Years a Slave, the latter which finds Cumberbatch playing a sympathetic but "weak, incapable and compromising" plantation owner to Michael Fassbender's psychotic slave owner. The actor's year rounds out with a stellar turn opposite Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts in August: Osage County (out Dec. 25), the family drama adapted from the Tony-winning play.

Despite rabid fan and critical reception to his portrayal of Star Trek Into Darkness' chilling new villain, The Fifth Estate is Cumberbatch's biggest test at the box office to date. In the film, he dissolves into a remarkable impression of Assange, camouflaging his cut-glass cheekbones, assuming a reedy, halting Australian pitch and covering his curls with a white wig.

"I wasn't into it to make (Assange) either a villain or a saint. In my opinion it should be about presenting the rich complexity of him as a whole," says Cumberbatch, who adds that he's "very much for the (WikiLeaks) movement. I think it's a very healthy sign of democracy that we can hold people who are in positions of power, and institutions who are in power over us, to account. Especially if they're elected parties or people we've put in power."

Drawing the line on transparency of the individual's information, he grants, is far more complicated. "But primarily what WikiLeaks did was revolutionary and wonderful. And I completely get why it terrified people. I have empathy for the State Department and other people whose houses were suddenly in complete and utter disarray. Everything they had known, all the structures and status quo, just vanished."

The film, while not wholly kind to Assange, certainly hoists the flag for his core principles. But it also has raised the curtain enough to make him squirm.

From his perch inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange and his team at WikiLeaks have released a point-by-point rebuttal of The Fifth Estate's narrative. (To date, Assange has only had access to the film's script.) WikiLeaks says the movie is based on the two most "toxic" books on the organization on the market.

By phone, Fifth Estate director Bill Condon disagrees. "They were just a few of several works that we used as source material," he retorts.

And to what of WikiLeaks' claims that the film, produced by DreamWorks, is "careful to avoid most criticism of U.S. policy actually revealed by WikiLeaks"?

"He's based all of that on early drafts" of the script, says Condon, pointing to a speech in the film in which Assange's (former) second-in-command, Daniel Domscheit-Berg (played by Rush's Daniel Bruhl), challenges the leader on the possible human cost of the 251,287 U.S. diplomatic cables WikiLeaks leaked from Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), without redaction, in 2010.

The fictional Assange "comes right back at him with a speech that's partially in the trailer about the people who lost their lives because of U.S. policy," says Condon.

Further, Condon says, the audience will see the State Department "create this talking point claiming that (Assange) has blood on his hands. It is actually quite critical of a tactic (the U.S. government) used" to attempt to discredit WikiLeaks, says the director. "So again, those are things that actually happened while we were making the film that aren't reflected in that draft. And I think he should see the film first, honestly."

On set, Bruhl says both actors worried over their roles. "For Benedict it was a very tricky situation," says Bruhl, who was able to confer with the real Domscheit-Berg. "So we always agreed in exchanging all the information we could get from all these different sources. And somehow tried to defend our characters, both of us."

Assange seems far from convinced. Even on a cosmetic level, WikiLeaks has gone on the offensive, positing the founder does not, as depicted in the film, dye his hair white.

"It is this incredibly bizarre thing. It's just so extremely obvious, you know?" says Condon, who adds a friend at the embassy has been charged with finding a hairdresser to fix an Assange dye job gone pink. "But again, that's what's fascinating about him."

The actor willing to take on Assange is no less fascinating. Cumberbatch's directors call his range startling; his fans (who swamp his public appearances) have given themselves a hilarious moniker, assembling fan sites, Twitter handles (@Cumberb**ches) and Tumblrs.

"WARNING," reads one Tumblr site. "This blog contains very sexy pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch. Benedict should be taken is small dosages."

It all seems to delight him. And why not? "The Cumberladies," says Cumberbatch, subbing in the word "lady" for his fans' cruder term . He grins: "The Cumberpeople."

Cumberladies. That sounds a bit like the Beyoncé song, we point out. "I'm a Cumberlady — " he sings on cue, dancing a bit in his chair. He stops. "I wonder if she could be a Cumberlady?"

She may well be. After slowly ascending for years with smaller roles in films such as Atonement, War Horse and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the actor is causing an international riot on the BBC show Sherlock, set to debut its third season, as the dashingly modern, often-abrasive detective, alongside a delightfully exasperated Watson (Martin Freeman).

"I'm lucky to have had this later rather than when I was younger," he says. "Because I'm self-conscious or aware of it enough to go — I wasn't (famous) in my 20s or my 30s, and now I sort of have that weird status, which I do find very strange."

Cumberbatch's transformative powers are spellbinding, say those who've worked with him. "The voice, it's just a wonder," says Condon. "It was great to see Star Trek after I was cutting Fifth Estate for so long and to hear this completely different thing coming out of him."

"He's a gentleman," says 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen. "And that's a rarity, I think, in life. He's just the real deal."

Auditioning for August, Cumberbatch sent a self-made iPhone video to director John Wells, who was so impressed he forwarded it on to August producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov.

"It was not the best quality you've ever seen. And his face was very close. But he was wonderful," says Wells. "At first I didn't realize that he was British because his southern Oklahoma accent was very good."

"I think when I was a kid my voice didn't break until quite late," says Cumberbatch, by way of explanation. "I think it was around 15 or 16, I can't quite remember, but I was thinking, 'Oh, this is ridiculous.' I was a very late developer at an all-boys boarding school. That's not great." He grins sheepishly at the memory. "I then went to town, I guess. ...Within a year of playing Rosalind in As You Like It ... when my voice dropped I was playing Willy in Death of a Salesman."

A late maturation, yet a smash teen hit. The Justin Bieber of his boarding school, one might say.

"I love it," Cumberbatch grins. "Beyoncé and Bieber in one Cumberinterview. CumberBiebers. The CumberBieberLadies."