Benedict Cumberbatch has said his character in new film The Courier has a “weird relevance” today because of the everyday heroes who have helped society come through the pandemic.
In the Cold War film, the actor plays Greville Wynne, a British travelling businessman who became a spy who is said to have helped diffuse the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Cumberbatch told The Big Issue there has been “amazing resilience” and “community-led volunteerism” during the pandemic.
He said: “It’s the idea that someone ordinary can do something extraordinary and unexpected – which we’re seeing left, right and centre, in the midst of all the ineptitude and carnage, for want of a better word, of this pandemic.
“We’ve seen some amazing resilience and amazing bravery and sacrifice and community-led volunteerism.”
He added: “Whether it’s WhatsApp groups in a village checking the elderly and other vulnerable people are being taken care of during lockdown or whether it’s care workers on the frontline and everybody who was and should forever remain in our thoughts as frontline workers, albeit in the kind of jobs that are invisible usually, which are the delivery men and women, the people who clean the wards of hospitals, the people who are doing orderly work, people who drive the tubes and the buses.
“The kind of people who have to keep on keeping on in order to avoid whole societal collapse.
“So in a weird way, this guy that we’re talking about, The Courier, Mr Greville Wynne, there’s a weird relevance to him at this juncture.”
He added that the impacts of the pandemic are “terrifying”.
He said: “I think the aftershock is going to be absolutely cataclysmic from these actions.
“It’s going to be massive. Huge.”