Benedict Cumberbatch says he’ll never play controversial character again that he had to ‘apologise a lot for’

The role had a lot of backlash

From Sherlock Holmes to Doctor Strange, it’s fair to say Benedict Cumberbatch has got some pretty big roles under his belt.

The 48-year-old is well-known for his work on both the stage and screen, with his first big TV role being Stephen Hawking in 2004’s Hawking. Since then, he’s also appeared in the likes of Eric, War Horse and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

But with plenty of major characters to his name, there’s one particularly controversial one Cumberbatch would never play again, and he had to ‘apologise a lot for’.

Cumberbatch as All. (Paramount Pictures)

And for fans, it’s one you might instantly remember – All in Zoolander 2.

The star appeared in Ben Stiller’s 2016 film, which currently has a pretty cr*p Tomatometer score of 22% and an even worse Popcornmeter score of 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, as the non-binary fashion model.

During Variety’s Know Their Lives video series, he said it’s a ‘difficult’ performance ‘to talk about’.

“I love that group of people and it was the chance to sort of be part of something that the first time around was iconic and I was a huge fan of. But it got complicated, and it got misunderstood and I upset people. I respect that, so I probably wouldn’t do that again now.”

Right from the moment the film’s trailer was first released, Cumberbatch’s role received backlash. An online petition even called for cinemagoers to boycott Zoolander 2.

Zoolander 2

Credit: Paramount Pictures

0 seconds of 2 minutes, 34 secondsVolume 90%

Racking up thousands of supporters, it stated at the time: “Cumberbatch’s character is clearly portrayed as an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals.

“This is the modern equivalent of using blackface to represent a minority. If the producers wanted to provide social commentary on the presence of trans/androgyne individuals in the fashion industry, they could have approached models like Andreja Pejic to be in the film. By hiring a cis actor to play a non-binary individual in a clearly negative way, the film endorses harmful and dangerous perceptions of the queer community at large.”

Back in 2022, he said during Actors on Actors that there was ‘a lot of contention around the role’.

“In this era, my role would never be performed by anybody other than a trans actor,” he added at the time. “But I remember at the time not thinking of it necessarily in that regard, and it being more about two dinosaurs, two heteronormative clichés not understanding this new diverse world. But it backfired a little bit.”