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05/07/2024 07:40:12 am

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Benedict Cumberbatch 'Mortified' by Audience's Avid Filming as He Stages 'Hamlet'; Did He Really Swear During Show?

Benedict Cumberbatch

(Photo : Reuters/Danny Moloshok/Files) British actor Benedict Cumberbatch poses backstage with his actor award for 'The Imitation Game' during the Hollywood Film Awards in Hollywood, California, in this November 14, 2014 file picture.

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch was not at all pleased with the kind of "support" given by fans during his "Hamlet" performance at The Barbican Centre in London on Saturday. Reports claimed that the "Sherlock" star lost his concentration to a jammed door on stage and allegedly shouted an expletive. The rant was supposedly fueled by earlier incidents wherein the actor had to restart his "to be or not to be" soliloquy after the accompanying audio failed to play, and the "mortifying' experience of being distracted by red lights of cameras snapping from the audience.

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The actor then took it upon himself to remind theater-goers a thing or two about viewing etiquette. In a video posted on YouTube, a calm Cumberbatch can be seen exiting the theater and pleading the audience and future viewers not to film him on stage. He also expressed his disapproval of the now common practice of recording events rather than savoring the experience in itself.

"I can see red lights in the auditorium, and it may not be any of you here that did that, but it's blindingly obvious. It's mortifying, and it's nothing less supportive or enjoyable as an actor being on stage experiencing that. i can't give you what I want to give you which is a live performance that you'll remember--hopefully in your minds and brains whether it's good, bad, or indifferent--rather than on your phones," Cumberbatch's lengthy speech went.

The 39-year-old actor also made it clear that he was not blaming the said audience but requesting them to share his message with everyone through their "funny electronic things." Although a self-confessed non-user of social media, Cumberbatch encouraged his fans to spread the word about his play and his request through "tweet, blog, and hashtag" on his behalf.

Cumberbatch is not the first actor to reprimand audience members who simply cannot abide by theater rules. The late theater titan Richard Griffiths demanded not one but two spectators to leave the theater in separate incidents--a man during the staging of "The History Boys" and a woman during "Heroes" in 2005. In 2009, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig, still in character, berated one viewer whose phone rang out loud twice during their scene in "A Steady Rain" on Broadway. And in 2013, a usually cool James McAvoy stopped his "Macbeth" performance to tell a patron to put his phone away.

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