English actor Benedict Cumberbatch knows a thing or two about running a country and “fulfilling Obama’s legacy,” apparently.
The 38-year-old is playing WWII codebreaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, a film premiering at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival this week. Turing, in case you’re culturally inept, was the openly gay Englishman who helped defeat Germany during WWII by intercepting and cracking coded Nazi messages, only to be chemically castrated for being gay.
So in the grand tradition of Press Not Being Able To Separate Characters From Celebrities, The Daily Beast has asked the actor some hard-hitting questions about how to tackle homophobia in the U.S. and how we’re supposed to feel about ISIS in pop culture. You know, things he’s qualified to talk about.
Aside from proclaiming that “gays are always the biggest homophobes,” Cumberbatch uses the interview to lay out a foolproof 16-year plan for American politics:
How about we take this to the next level?
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TDB: There’s still a lot of homophobia in the U.S., as well.
Benedict Cumberbatch: Oh, the Christian far right? Yes. Very homophobic. You need to have a female president next, and then after that, a gay president. That’s the full journey from Obama’s legacy onwards. There’s a great Morrissey lyric from “America Is Not the World” from You Are the Quarry that goes, “In America, the land of the free, they said / And of opportunity, in a just and truthful way / But where the president is never black, female or gay, and until that day / You’ve got nothing to say to me, to help me believe.” It’s quite an old song from before Obama took office, but you’ve done black, then you need to do female, then the next, gay.
Listen up, Congress! This guy’s got all the answers here. We’ve “done black,” and now we have to “do” female and gay.
Intrigued? You can also hear about the painful homophobia this straight man endured as a child in the same interview.
Tackle
Is that Benedict? Damn that is a bad pic.
And about his opinion, just his opinion. So no offense taken.
james_in_cambridge
Look at all the Republican gays that have damaged the community in the last 20 years, from that loser that ran Bush’s homophobic Presidential campaign in 2004 to all the anti-gay politicians that are always being exposed as gay. He’s right.
Lefty
Good God, I know he’s a posh twit and like all posh twits he has an inflated sense of entitlement and the need to pronounce from on high, but this really takes the biscuit for sheer pompous self-important posho fuckwittery.
“…gays are always the biggest homophobes” – and he’s an expert on all forms of homophobia now, is he?
“Yah, I saw a homophobic incident at Uni, yah? And I was like, who cares if the gays are gay, yah? Because, we have to, like, you know, yah? And anyway, yah, they’re the most homophobic of all, so like, let them eat themselves, yah? Did I mention I play Alan Turing in a new film, yah? He was a gayer but we’ve given him a lady to feel all conflicted over in this film, yah? Yah, those poor gays!”
AtticusBennett
closeted gay conservatives are almost always virulently homophobic, as are insecure grown men who never learned how to stand up to their homophobic and misogynistic fathers.
http://littlekiwilovesbauhaus.blogspot.ca/2013/09/mask-for-masc.html
WhatWontWillDo
So you’re upset because he was asked questions about homophobia and, instead of saying “sorry, not gay, can’t talk about it”, decided to answer as well as he could while citing what little experience he’s had with homosexuality and homophobia….. Okay then
degaulle
It was actually a very pro-gay interview during which he expressed his disgust about homophobia and was clearly trying to say that he thinks closeted politicians are the biggest homophobes. Queerty needs to stop attacking allies.
Masc Pride
@degaulle: I agree. This guy seems pretty LGB-friendly. I think the rage-baiting (targeting an ally) in this article is a perfect example of what he said about gays being the biggest homophobes.
@smittoons: Yes, I remember that too. I think some of the bitchiness a lot of gay men seem to be so quick to unleash is because of pent up frustration and unhappiness. Lots of misdirected hostility.
michael mellor
Religion is not homophobic per se. It is anti-homosexual. There’s a big difference.
Xzamilio
@michael mellor: Okay, and the mainstream religions are not anti-woman per se. They are extremely misogynistic… now tell me: If you are a woman, or a gay person, would you care about that small distinction (not a “big difference” at all)?
Saint Law
@Lefty: I’ve little time for Cabbagepatch but I agree that the biggest homophobes are often gay. I mean why wouldn’t that be the case?
For most peops growing up gay even now, the negative associations attached by bigots to our sexuality will far outweigh the positive, leaving self-hatred the default.
Of course one can out-grow such self-hatred – it is very much to be hoped that one does, but it can take a lot of work. And as the stats for drug and alcohol dependency, unsafe sex and mental illness in the gay community show, for many it’s too much.
What is at the root of such endemic dysfunction if not homophobia?
mz.sam
Who did the photo editing of Benedict? He looks like a total dweeb here! As a matter of fact, he doesn’t look terribly better in his latest film, The Imitation Game.
Chris
Dude missed some sort of big event because he was officiating a gay couple’s wedding. His answers about issues involving gay folk seem rather enlightened if a bit broad and opinionated — but then, what person doesn’t come off as opinionated when their interview is edited for space? All in all, he seems like an okay bloke who I’m glad to have on our side.
Cam
Hollywood closet cases, huge homophobes
How many Anti-Gay christian conservatives have been caught with male prostitutes?
Log Cabin Republicans actually endorsed anti-gay candidates running against pro-gay candidates…homophobic when the purpose of your group is supposedly about gay issues.
So not really sure why anybody would take offense at the comment. As for that picture, he is either a really bad looking guy who has been strategically posed in every single movie he’s been in, or somebody searched REALLY hard for the most unflattering picture ever. lol
Ridpathos
Well, you all know he’s right though. What always ends up happening with these uber-anti-gay preachers, they’re caught tapping their feet in the bathroom stalls for some glory hole action.
Lefty
@Saint Law: I agree completely, but there’s also an awful amount of straight people in the world who just hate gay people. The idea that all homophobes are secretly gay is such a simplistic argument; not to mention a self-defeating one.
Your point about the impact of our upbringing (and parental influence) on our emotions and attitude to sexuality will also apply to straight boys who grew up in deeply homophobic environments. Some will grow up to have different attitudes and some won’t.
The idea that the *worst* homophobes are all secretly gay is just as spurious; but let’s face it, Posh Twit’s argument’s are hardly well thought through, are they?
“…you’ve done black, then you need to do female, then the next, gay.”
Really???
Teresa Minks
Once you’ve done black, you never go back.
Cam
@Lefty:
He didn’t say all homophobes, he said the biggest homophobes.
crowebobby
What drives me crazy is all the Auntie Tomasinas who consider themselves “good homosexuals” and feel the need to prove it with their railing comments against the “disgusting queers” who give us all a bad name by cruising in public, having sex with men they haven’t been formally introduced to or, worse yet lusting after straight men. No need to even specify the “pedos” who find men who look under 30 (whether they are or not) sexually attractive or have affairs with men who are more than a eight years their junior . . . no matter what the respective ages. How are we ever going to be accepted by the Great American Moral Majority if we insist on tolerating this perverted behavior by our own sisters (I mean, brothers).
DickieJohnson
“…you’ve done black, then you need to do female, then the next, gay.” Now, y’all have to admit, this is a helluva lot better idea than the Republicans have brainstormed!