The sparks really fly in Cumberbatch’s illuminating movie
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH is as switched on as you would be if you were portraying Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric light, phonograph and many other things we take for granted.
I’m in the make-up trailer as Cumberbatch is having hairpieces woven into his own hair, so he can play the canny and cantankerous Edison in director Alfonso Gomez- Rejon’s film The Current War, about the intense rivalry between Edison and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon).
The movie — which also features Nicholas Hoult as another pioneering inventor, Nikola Tesla — looks at the race to design a system that will distribute the newfangled electricity to the masses in America.
Cumberbatch said because ‘everything is at our fingertips’ we have little comprehension of what the world was like in Edison’s day.
‘Every century has those moments where inventions are coming thick and fast,’ he said. ‘Imagine how what was once industrial became domestic — like the washing machine. Now imagine the world without it. Now imagine a world without the power to make it work.’
The actor has always been drawn to projects that look at the lengths people will go to ‘to carve out history for themselves’.
Edison, for instance, had a gift not just for science, but for self-promotion.
Director Gomez- Rejon hopes that Westinghouse, who had a rival electricity company to Edison, will be remembered for his contribution to making current accessible to the masses.
‘People associate Edison with inventing things he probably didn’t, because he did brand himself, and I don’t say whether that’s good or bad. Westinghouse was a man of honour, but can you win by doing the right thing?’
The Current War, which also stars Tuppence Middleton as Edison’s first wife Mary, and Tom Holland ( the new Spider-Man), will open here late this year.
Meanwhile, Cumberbatch has been working on two Avenger films featuring Doctor Strange, as well as a fivepart adaptation of the Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St Aubyn (called Melrose) for Sky Atlantic and Showtime.