Actors can exist in a “bubble” untroubled by real world issues, but Benedict Cumberbatch told an Irish audience his profession needed to use its star power to shine a light on the climate crisis.
The award-winning leading man, known for roles including Sherlock and Dr Strange, was in Dublin speaking about his activism and how to use an entertainment stage as a platform for change.
Mr Cumberbatch said the climate action movement needed a Will and Grace style show to get the issue into resistant homes and mindsets.
He praised the hit television comedy that ran between 1998 and 2000 for normalising gay relationships and said film and television had the potential to do the same for climate.
RM Block
“The less heavy-handed the better, that’s what we’ve learned,” he said, adding that the environmental movement had been “hijacked by politics” early on.
“Will and Grace is a great model for gay rights. That got the idea of same-sex marriage into Republican homes. That pushed the vote.”
He said producers could do similar for climate by small adjustments to scripts and scenes.
“Induction hobs in the back of the shot instead of gas cookers. An electric car instead of a luxury combustible engine.
“It’s that subliminal messaging, it’s creating a norm.”
Green Rider
Mr Cumberbatch supports the Green Rider movement started by TV and film professionals to try to eliminate waste in the industry. He said he had seen entire replica streets torn down and dumped in skips after filming, while the food waste on sets was massive.
He encouraged influential people in the industry to push for upcycling of sets, less meat in catering and electrical generators instead of diesel.
“These can be riders, these can be contractual. You can say, I don’t need to travel by private jet,” he said.
“You can look after my privacy and security getting me to and from the plane and I can fly commercial.
“Or I don’t need to travel this journey in a car. I’d much rather be in a train. I can stretch my legs, do some work.
“Worried about public interaction? Then send me with a security detail.”
Mr Cumberbatch was a guest speaker at the annual AIB Sustainability Conference.
Known for human rights activism since he joined the Stop the War Coalition opposed to the war on Iraq in 2003, he said he had become particularly concerned about the environment and climate change following the birth of his children.
Now a father of three boys, he said he wanted to teach them about the challenges the world faced without “alarming them into anxiety”.
With his wider audience, he said he also had to avoid proselytising and confrontation as social media was fuelling “horrific polarities” in public discussion.
“The chief thing that’s levelled at a lot of us in the creative industries is the hypocrisy of us standing for environmental issues and social justice when so much of our time is spent in a privileged bubble of infantilisation,” he said.
He said there was some hypocrisy in his own extensive travel when at the same time he was speaking out about climate.
But he said creatives had a platform and needed to use it.
He name-checked Adam McKay’s satirical film, Don’t Look Up; Mark Ruffalo’s Dark Waters; and The End We Start From, adapted from the novel written by his wife’s sister, as examples of how the industry could tell important climate and environment stories.
“It’s the unavoidable truth of what’s happening in the world,” he said. “And it’s better that 99 imperfect people do something than one angel do everything.”
