Benedict Cumberbatch won’t reveal MCU secrets to Jimmy Kimmel, but he will castrate your cows
Excessive smoking isn't the only thing The Power Of The Dog star learned on set
TV News Benedict Cumberbatch
Introducing Benedict Cumberbatch on Thursday’s show, Jimmy Kimmel touted his illustrious guest’s nerd cred, noting that the actor’s been in “four Marvel movies, three Hobbits, and even a Star Trek.” Throw in Sherlock Holmes and a guy who paints psychedelic cats, and that’s pretty much a career, although the acclaimed actor has now also added cowboy to his resumé, just to get all of those little boy dreams out of the way.
Showing a clip of Cumberbatch’s Old West, Montana-accented frontiersman being a jerk to a waiter just trying to serve Cumberbatch’s men some lunch, Kimmel asked if an appropriately rustic twang was the only thing Cumberbatch learned in preparation for the Jane Campion-directed Western, The Power Of The Dog. And boy, was it not, as Cumberbatch—already receiving that coveted Oscar buzz for his portrayal of the film’s sadistic and waiter-baiting rancher—revealed that his three weeks doing preparatory dude ranch duties also taught him everything from banjo-picking, to rope-making, to rolling (too many) one-handed cigarettes, to perhaps even the average rancher’s least-relished duty.
“You learned castration?,” Kimmel squeaked out incredulously, with Cumberbatch merely responding with an ominously terse, “I learned a lot of stuff.” And while Cumberbatch wasn’t forthcoming about just how Method he got when it came time for the apparently necessary ranching step of de-balling enormous cattle, well, the guy didn’t get a Best Actor nomination by playing the dilettante, did he. Cumberbatch noted that the acting prep for his other current release, the artist biopic The Electrical Life Of Lewis Wain (about the 19th century artist whose day-glo cat portraits later became the go-to static entertainment of tripping 1960s hipsters) was stressful in quite a different way. In that herding cats is a lot tougher, as it turns out, than herding cows.
Kimmel, whipping out Cumberbatch’s action figure from the ever-marketable Marvel Universe’s Doctor Strange franchise, segued from taciturn cowpokes and neurotic artists to the eternally buzzed-about MCU. “I must ask you about some Marvel Comics stuff, because it’s my job,” explained Kimmel, with the Marvel-contracted actor promising only that he’d hold onto any spoilers about either Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness or Spider-Man: No Way Home tighter than Strange did that infinity stone. (Sure, Strange had a plan when he coughed the time stone up to Thanos, but, still.)
“Eh,” Cumberbatch shrugged noncommittally to Kimmel’s leading question about fan theories that Strange’s behavior in the Spider-sequel’s trailer is a little, well, strange. (As Kimmel conceded, everybody always thinks everybody is actually demonic Marvel baddie Mephisto in disguise.) “Do they?,” Cumberbatch then asked airily in response to Kimmel relaying the rumor about former Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprising their roles within Tom Holland’s spider-verse.
And, when Kimmel brought up the fact that Cumberbatch’s The Power Of The Dog costar Kirsten Dunst is hinted to be similarly popping back in as Mary Jane Watson, the Marvel-muzzled actor gave up only a deadpan, “Really?” Thanos is one thing, but, as MCU heroes and villains alike have learned the hard way, the real, terrifying power is in the hands of Disney’s legal department.
The Power of the Dog will be released in select theaters on Nov. 17 and debut on Netflix on Dec. 1.
12 Comments
Ballsack Cattlesnatch
You don’t castrate cows, those are female cattle and typically used to make more cows. You castrate bulls, because you really only need one bull and castrating the rest makes them easier to deal with and apparently taste better – that last part is a little bit “citation needed” but also what all the farmers said.
Yeah, Cumberbatch doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. We used to castrate bulls during my childhood, and never once castrated a heifer (female cow).And yes, my uncles used to eat the castrated parts all the time. They said they were delicious. I’m as country as you can get, but I never ate them, so I always haver to deal with jerks who want to question my rural credibility.Maybe Cumberbatch would like to eat some mountain oysters? I can set him up.
I like how you can immediately tell who grew up on a cattle farm by how they react to cow terminology and the depiction of secondary sex characteristics – don’t get me started on that animated film Barnyard, which is either complete nonsense or a rare film with several transgender main characters. As for prairie oysters (now there’s a way to tell where you raised your cattle) my parents thought the idea gross so we never had any. I don’t regret that.
You CAN’T castrate a cow, because they don’t have the things you need to remove.
I mean, you can render them infertile. That would require surgery and no farmer in their right mind would do it, but it is possible.
But that’s not a castration.
He also learned how to milk a bull.
Have you seen the price of top quality semen? Milking a bull is probably the most profitable thing you can do.
No, but I’ve tasted it!
I am so glad that all of cinema is now viewed in relation to whether or not an actor is in an MCU movie, and must answer questions about it for the rest of their career. We’ve come so far.
some of the comments here remind of the time I used the term “automatic weapon” on Gizmodo and was hastily and huffily corrected about 50 times that “automatic weapons don’t exist, the correct term is ‘semi-automatic’”, because in the context of the Newtown massacre, THAT’s what was important LOL