Benedict Cumberbatch Says Participating in His ‘Letters Live’ Stage Show Is ‘An Immediate Shot in the Arm for a Performer’
variety.comK.J. Yossman In 2013 Jamie Byng, CEO of publisher Canongate, gathered a host of familiar faces including Nick Cave and Gillian Anderson in a disused London church and persuaded them to read a bunch of letters in front of an audience for charity.
Cave selected the message he’d sent to MTV turning down a nomination for Best Male Artist while Anderson re-enacted a letter Katharine Hepburn wrote to Spencer Tracy decades after he’d died.
Benedict Cumberbatch, fresh from shooting “The Imitation Game,” also took part, reading a letter from Second World War cryptanalyst Alan Turing, whom he’d just finished portraying on screen.
Initially, Cumberbatch tells Variety, he felt “wary” about reading the dispatch, which Turing had written during one of the lowest points of his life, when he awaiting trial for homosexuality.
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