SHADOVVY PUPPET

Benedict Cumberbatch goes back to the 80s for Netflix series Eric, which features his strangest co ‐star to date: a massive man-ina-suit puppet representing his character’s personal demons. Total Film hears from the cast and creators behind what is perhaps the most unusual New York crime drama ever to hit TV.

n 1980s New York, the creator of a popular puppet-based children’s TV show, Good Day Sunshine, grapples with the disappearance of his nine-year-old son, while his already strained marriage falls apart. Meanwhile, the detective in charge of this missing-person case uncovers a wave of corruption, and struggles with his secret life as a gay man against the backdrop of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Oh, and that dad whose child is missing? He starts hallucinating the presence of a giant monster puppet that follows him around the city.

‘It’s not an obvious recipe, is it?’ Total Film is speaking to writer and showrunner Abi Morgan about Eric, her peculiar new limited series for Netflix. The Emmy and BAFTAwinning writer of shows The Hour, The Split and River, as well as Steve McQueen’s film Shame, Morgan excitingly blends gritty naturalism with fantastical fable in her latest project.

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as both the puppeteer, Vincent Anderson, and the voice of the creature, Eric, that starts appearing in his delusions. Transparent star Gaby Hoffmann is his long-suffering wife, Cassie; screen newcomer Ivan Morris Howe plays Edgar, their seemingly abducted son; and the compelling McKinley Belcher III (Ozark) is Michael Ledroit, the detective put under pressure by his superiors after they realise that the missing Edgar is the grandson of a powerful local tycoon (The Wire’s John Doman).

Morgan breaks down her initial pitch to Netflix for us: ‘It’s about a father who goes on a search to find his missing son, accompanied by a seven-foot-four blue puppet who’s come to help him and is discovered within the drawings that his son’s left behind. And the reason why I want to set it in the mid-80s is I want to look at the idea of how a case like that was dealt with at the time.

‘That opened up all the various elements of the NYPD and City Hall. And then, as I went deeper into that, I started to look at this incredible disparity between the Fifth Avenue and Wall Street affluence of New York and then this huge subculture of lowerincome families affected by gentrification. And when I started to think about all those themes, I thought, they’re as resonant today as they were 40 years ago. I thought it was a really good way of looking at the present by looking at the past.’

Speaking on that examination of the time period and specific New York setting, Benedict Cumberbatch describes Eric as a truly distinctive exploration of the era. ‘The amalgamation of this cross-section of that time – the people, the society and the culture of it all – is pretty unique,’ he says. ‘Abi’s sewn them all together into this extraordinary tapestry that’s resonant with things we know but is utterly its own creation – it’s pretty special.’

Welsh-born Morgan spent some of the 1980s living in New York, though further inspiration for Eric stemmed from a childhood as the daughter of a theatre director. ‘I grew up in a world of sets,’ she says. ‘And that’s what made me latch onto this idea of creative geniuses who are actually chaotic in their personal and home life. What I became fascinated by in the character of Vincent was that he is this brilliant creative mastermind on America’s leading puppet show by day, but at night his marriage is falling apart and it’s about this relationship with his son. I also wanted to explore legacy, male toxicity and the things we inherit from our fathers.’

‘I wanted to explore legacy, male toxicity and the things we inherit from our fathers’

ABI MORGAN

As the show goes on, you start to understand where Eric has come from. Before his disappearance, Edgar is drawing this imagined friend, but you realise that the boy has been absorbing every little detail of his fraught living situation when creating the character and his backstory. ‘The swish of the tail is meant to feel like Edgar’s cat,’ says Morgan, ‘and with the voice, which is born from Vincent himself, Vincent comes to see that he has his own part to play in the creation of Eric; literally, but also emotionally in the way that Edgar perceived him.’ In many ways, Vincent is difficult, self-centred and a narcissist. But in other ways, we’re also watching a man evolving and starting to understand himself through this journey to find his child. He becomes convinced that if he can get a built version of Eric onto TV, then Edgar will see it and return home.

MASTERS OF PUPPETS

Fraggle Rock. The Dark Crystal. The Great Muppet Caper. Labyrinth. Peter Jackson’s Meet the Feebles. The 1980s was arguably the golden age of puppet-based media, which presented challenges for the Eric team to design entirely original creations that could feel authentic in the period setting.

‘When we were designing what the puppets should be,’ says series director Lucy Forbes (This is Going to Hurt), ‘we’re thinking about certain animals and things. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop has created thousands and thousands of puppets. It was incredibly difficult to find a world that they hadn’t touched, which we eventually did.

But the really interesting thing is how they were made. We didn’t want anything to feel like it didn’t belong in the period. There’s this certain type of puppet material they don’t make any more, and Stitches and Glue – [the company] who created all our puppets – found some in the back of a warehouse. There were only two rolls left and we were incredibly lucky to be able to use them.

‘The big thing for me,’ continues Forbes, ‘was that the design of Eric had to straddle both environments. He had to belong on the streets of New York but also fit in Good Day Sunshine’s world. If we’d just made him a bright blue puppet, I think he would’ve been an eyesore. Eric is [inherently] an enormous rug pull. It needed to be a rug pull, but not so much that it just makes people turn off because he doesn’t fit into the environment. Colour palette was really important, and designing him in a way where we can dirty him up as he goes along.’

Cumberbatch describes his hallucinated scene partner as ‘a mood-shifting entity. He can be everything from the foul-mouth buddy to the thing that can say the things we can’t. He’s an enabler at one point. He’s a protector, a shadow-self, a friend. He’s a needy partner. He’s a sage in a way, a spirit guide.’ Based on what Gaby Hoffmann tells us, the Eric puppet was quite an overwhelming presence. ‘It was truly startling when I walked on set the first time and encountered Eric,’ she says. ‘I started to cry. He really touches on something true. I’m so curious to see how people respond.’

Before her early days as a child star in Field of Dreams and more, Hoffmann grew up in the Manhattan neighbourhood that Eric takes place in, living in the famous Chelsea Hotel during the 1980s. ‘There was a real rawness to the city that I actually miss very much,’ she tells us with a laugh. ‘It’s been washed away by corporate culture to some extent.’ Related to those changes, Eric ended up being filmed primarily in New Jersey and Budapest. Hoffmann describes the latter as having ‘this he’s gay and he’ mental-health i not being able to around him who

The child goi cooker on all the to which they’re in which they pe ‘and how the wo people will rise t break and have Regardless of and its troubled enamoured with – original prod Belcher. ‘And regurgitated a of a story tha be itself and of somethin and refreshi dark, beautiful but almost neglected feeling in parts of it. And that was very much the feeling of especially downtown New York in the 80s.’

‘The better he gets at doing his job, the more his personal life unravels’

McKINLEY BELCHER III

‘The show does a really great job of capturing the rhythm of New York City,’ McKinley Belcher III tells TF. ‘The energy that can be both exhilarating and exhausting.’ Belcher’s co-lead part as wearied Detective Ledroit is – if you’ll excuse the puppet pun – one of the most deeply felt emotional elements of the series. ‘As he starts to put the pieces together more, he realises how flawed the system is,’ Belcher says. ‘And the better he gets at doing his job, the more his personal life unravels.

‘What was most important to me is that he starts the show with his queerness being very much a thing that is hidden; he is afraid of it being discovered and it being weaponised in a way that would be detrimental. His journey is coming to terms with both his Blackness and his queerness, and understanding that that’s his superpower; that’s what makes him different and gives him a window into a kind of empathy and a point of view that means he is the [right] person for this job.’

‘I think these are two men in search of a place in a world that is stacked against them,’ says Cumberbatch of both Ledroit and Vincent. ‘[Ledroit] societally, because he’s gay and he’s Black, and [Vincent] because of the mental-health issue, it not being understood, and him not being able to function without destroying those around him who are supposedly helping.’

The child going missing seemingly acts as a pressure cooker on all these people’s lives, exposing the degrees to which they’re flawed and broken. ‘It reveals the ways in which they personally need to change,’ says Belcher, ‘and how the world around them needs to change. Some people will rise to that mandate and other people will break and have an inability to step into that change.’

Regardless of how audiences end up receiving Eric and its troubled characters, all the talent involved seem enamoured with this multifaceted, odd and – crucially – original production. ‘It’s beautifully weird,’ says Belcher. ‘And in a world where so much IP is being regurgitated and recycled, to witness and be a part of a story that is truly unique, and is bold enough to be itself and to not have to stand on the shoulders of something that existed before, is really exciting and refreshing.’

ERIC PREMIERES GLOBALLY ON NETFLIX FROM 30 MAY.