Benedict Cumberbatch says bosses "said no" to original Eric voice
Benedict Cumberbatch has revealed that Eric bosses "said no" to the original voice he'd concocted for his character.
While promoting the brand-new Netflix series, the actor exclusively explained to Digital Spy how the sound of 1980s puppeteer Vincent needed to "belong to my body".
"I wanted to go a little bit augmented and create something more startling than the lower register that I can produce, because it limits your range of pitch. It limits how you can give characterisation and colour to the expression, if you have a voice of my pitch and then push it lower," he said.
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Apparently, the team behind Eric rejected his initial efforts.
"I'm kind of happy with it," added Cumberbatch, having eventually settled on a voice everybody was into.
"I'm one of the worst critics of my own work. I don't read critics, so who knows. But to me, I agree that it had to come from something that was utterly linked with Vincent. And therefore, it was a playful thing. We wanted him to be working class."
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The Doctor Strange star was searching for a particular "gruffness" that would then "be adaptable into what he is in the show at the end.
"I mean the show within the show, the actual puppet show that he's being made for – which is someone who's had dominance in a dark place and is trying to come into the light and is terrified of it because he doesn't know what lightness is.
"There's a sort of light vulnerability to his voice in the final iterations of him. But yeah, also make him humorous, also make him fun, also make him dangerous as well," he concluded.
Across Eric's six episodes, Cumberbatch plays a man desperately trying to find his missing son Edgar. While doing so, he clings to a series of drawings done by Edgar, which depict a blue monster named Eric. The creature becomes his only ally when those around Vincent start drifting away.
Eric is now streaming on Netflix.
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