THOM YORKE: I don’t have any chronology to my questions. My approach is a bit more random, a bit more Just Seventeen [an out-of-print British teen magazine]. I actually want to start with the year you taught in a monastery in Darjeeling when you were 19. How was that experience?
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: It was in an exiled Tibetan community, just outside of Darjeeling, on the border. It was a little hill station town. I was one of five teachers who had done a training course. It was extraordinary, but it was quite an isolated experience.
YORKE: How long did you do that?
CUMBERBATCH: It was five months. I spent half a year working odd jobs to build up funds for the airfare and to pay for the course. You’re not paid for the teaching; you’re paid in experience. You’re surrounded by the monks and their lives. It was a small monastery, and the top floor was the temple. I was living on the bottom floor, which was pretty damp and had huge spiders. I think it was just near the end of the rainy season; I can’t remember, but it was cold. And because it was so high up, you would open your window, and the clouds were like dry ice rolling across your desk. Nature was ever present; that was gobsmackingly beautiful, as was the spirit and nature and philosophy and way of life of these monks.
YORKE: I was curious to know if you’ve ever taken a long period and removed yourself from the trajectory that you’re on. Do you ever feel the need to step off the train? The reason I ask is because, as I was following my trajectory, I never saw out of it. I never thought about it until one day I was no longer in my body. I had a full crash and had to stop—for a very long time. And then I started studying meditation. And when I did finally sit down, I found myself on a retreat, sitting on a cushion, and it was like someone had stuck a radio to my head and turned it up full blast. I was like, “Oh my god!”
CUMBERBATCH: It’s so loud when you stop to listen to it. Because you’re just in the flow of it all the time, picking out whatever the loudest thing is, or the most negative.
YORKE: I would sit down in my studio, and as soon as I started working, the voices would start telling me, “You can’t do this, you can’t do that,” so I had to stop. I had to figure it out.
CUMBERBATCH: I’ve definitely had breaks in that sense. And I’m amazed at the trajectory you’ve been on. The incessant demands of record labels, all of that. In many ways, I think I’m on a slower trajectory. That’s something I have to work on: to separate what really matters, to conserve energy by not worrying about what other people think. I mean, nothing really prepares you for all the stuff—
YORKE: But you did have parents who were in the same business.
CUMBERBATCH: That has helped massively. Even though their experiences were different from mine. I wasn’t a child actor brat; I didn’t travel with them in the circuit. But I got a look into their world, so I did know what I was getting into, to an extent. And they are a constant source of grounding. My massive motivation in life is to make them proud. But even that has to stop at a point.
Read the full interview at Interview Magazine.
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