The Star Trek film series has a new villain in British actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, and he’s revealing his biggest challenges on set.
Cumberbatch plays John Harrison in this summer’s Star Trek: Into Darkness. Cumberbatch spoke to Rolling Stone and described his character as a “one-man weapon of mass destruction, driven by super-human levels of emotion.” In the film, Harrison zones in on Starfleet, threatening to start an intergalactic conflict.
In playing the villain, Cumberbatch struggled to interact with the rest of the tightly-nit cast on the set between filming. The evident chemistry between existing ensemble cast members was difficult to combat, especially once filming began.
“I did have to physically remove myself on a couple of occasions,” Cumberbatch tells MTV News, “ to just get my game on, set my head straight and realize that there was glass, literal and figurative, between my character and their characters."
J.J. Abrams, who sought to develop familial feelings between the cast members, directed this latest installment of the reboot of the classic television series. Abrams recently praised the cast while explaining that each actor played an integral part in creating an effective ensemble, “And the beautiful thing was that, to a person, this cast was elevating every scene they were in — the best version of what it could have been."
Star Trek: Into Darkness hits theatres Friday, May 17.