5 MINUTES WITH...

Benedict Cumberbatch, 41, is fantastic as children’s author Stephen in BBC1’S The Child In Time, who suffers utter heartbreak when his daughter goes missing…

This sounds like a harrowing watch… My character Stephen – who by profession writes children’s books – is a happy and loving father; but all that changes when he suffers the unimaginable trauma of losing his daughter in a supermarket, which becomes the centre of the drama. The Child In Time is about how he is destroyed by that incident – and how it affects his relationships and everything that has given him purpose before that point.

You have children yourself [Christopher, two, and Hal, six months]; did it make playing Stephen even more tough?

When you’re dealing with something like the loss of a child it’s pretty distressing, I won’t lie. It was a very unpleasant place to go to – and by circumstance it happened that my second boy had been born weeks before. How you make sense of a life with an absence that is ever present is a horrible thing to even contemplate.

Kelly Macdonald plays your wife, Julie…

Kelly is a phenomenal actress and I was thrilled when she was interested in taking on the role. The relationship between Stephen and Julie is critical to the story because the loss of their daughter drives them apart. Their love is manifested in the child, and when she goes missing it becomes very hard for them. They’re both lost in their own worlds of grief.

You’re an Exec Producer on this as well…

I’m very proud to say I am! In a year my production company (Sunnymarch) has produced and made this drama and we’re delighted to be giving the world the first ever Ian Mcewan television adaptation. I worked with Ian before on (the film)

Atonement.