BBC said Cumberbatch wasn’t ‘sexy’ enough to play Sherlock
By Josh Haggis
The BBC suggested Benedict Cumberbatch wasn’t “sexy” enough to play Sherlock Holmes, the show’s co-creator has revealed.
Cumberbatch, 37, has won plenty of male and female fans (some of whom call themselves the “Cumberbitches”) since he landed the title role on Sherlock in 2010 – but Steven Moffat, who created the hit show with Mark Gatiss, has now claimed the BBC wasn’t keen to cast him.
“You promised us a sexy Sherlock, not him,” the BBC apparently said, according to Moffat in a new interview with The Independent.
“They said the same of casting David Tennant as Casanova,” he added.
Series three of Sherlock aired earlier this year. A fourth series is rumoured to be in the works, but has yet to be officially commissioned by the BBC.
Meanwhile, Cumberbatch is set to play Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, the forthcoming biopic of the recently-pardoned gay World War Two code-breaker.
The Imitation Game also stars Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode and Mark Strong, and will be released in cinemas at a yet to be announced date this year.