ON PLAYING HEROIN ADDICT
How Benedict got under the skin of Patrick Melrose for adaptation of popular books about a man driven to the edge by childhood abuse
£13,000-a-term Harrow. What the actor was determined to do as the star and executive producer of the series was to make sure it wasn’t about “high-class champagne problems”.
He said: “The type of person who struggles with addiction, who has experienced abuse, sadly ranges across all class divides and so there is a universality to this that I think will translate – plus this scalpel laser-like examination of the death throes of the old-world behaviour and attitudes of the worst of the upper classes.
“They can have the most extraordinary ideas of ownership and property and what wealth is – but this story is about how the true wealth is love, and how true, pure, good, innocent love can win through. But, boy, does it struggle to get there.”
Helping him to play an addict were husband-and-wife team, Cher and Russell from 3D Research.
Benedict said: “They have struggled with addiction themselves and were incredibly candid and encouraging and supporting throughout the creative process.
“This is a very well-heeled and experienced junkie by the time we meet him. So learning how to shoot up and what the effect is on the body and mind was of paramount importance.
“The paraphernalia and business of consumption was very complex and important to understand as, of course, were the physical and psychological effects of these substances.
“But most important was the drive behind the appetite, the addiction, the psychological need these destructive drugs create.” e added: “What are they replacing? With heroin, pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to says it’s about the warm embrace you never got from your mother. The relief from the suffering of existence.
“But it’s not all just abstracting yourself from your reality because some of those drugs, especially the more active rather than the opiate ones, will exacerbate your neurotic tensions and memories and throw you down the well of self into a vortex of your own making.
“In the instance of cocaine, it’s the jet-engine rush of crystal citadels shattering, ie the highest of highs, then the heroin as medicine to ease the landing.
“Of course, it was important to get the technicalities right.”
The actor admitted he felt the pressure of taking on another character with his own dedicated fanbase, saying: “Yeah, there really is and that’s a bit daunting.
“Of course, I’ve experienced that with other iconic literary figures but we did something very radical with Sherlock – I think we also brought it to a massive new audience. And there have been a fair few before me and will be a fair few to come.
“This is one of only two attempts ( Jack Davenport starred in a feature film adaptation of one of the Patrick Melrose books, Mother’s Milk).
“Every reader has their own cinema playing when reading fiction this good and because it is a long narrative of salvation, reading becomes a very personal thing.”
Benedict had met St Aubyn socially before but didn’t want to approach him too early once they’d started making the series.
He said: “Then I bumped into him at a party and he said, ‘Are these books happening?” I said, ‘Yes, they definitely are.’ He was generous and incredibly good company. “He’s incredibly erudite, intelligent and witty but he’s also amazingly empathetic and genteel.
“How someone that good has come out of something so bad is a miracle, so I respect him for that alone, let alone how he’s imbued his art with it.”
Cumberbatch has dabbled with producing since 2013, with short film Little Favour, last year’s The Child in Time and now this.
But with two young children to wife Sophie, he’s not rushing to the other side of the camera.
He said: “Seeing the amount of work Edward Berger had directing all five episodes of Patrick Melrose, right now is not a good time. Acting in that part was quite enough.”
Of his role in Avengers: Infinity War, Cumberbatch said: “It’s mind-blowingly epic. It is not underselling it to say that it is one of the grandest, most exciting movie events of the last decade.”
Patrick Melrose begins on May 13, on Sky Atlantic/NOW TV at 9pm