Name: Grief Manifests As An Eight Foot Tall Crow In Benedict Cumberbatch's "The Thing with Feathers"
Uploaded: 2025-11-20T17:10:54.000Z
Duration: 5 min 58 s
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We are back, ladies and gentlemen, with the star of the Thing With Feathers, Benedict Cumberbatch.

Were you familiar with the book before you.

For those who haven't read, Please Tell the people what it's about.

It's a story of a father experiencing the loss of his wife, very sudden death, and

bringing up two small children, and the year after that.

And it takes place over three sort of chapters.

One is about the dad's point of view, then about the children's point of view, and

then this entity that is this mad realization and overwhelming and unruly, unwelcome and eventually comforting creature, crow, which comes alive in the book.

He's a Ted Hughes scholar, and the crow poems are his obsession.

And this work becomes the way that grief manifests within the family, both for him and the children.

Now, I'm familiar with the thing with feathers being hope, according to Emily Dickinson, is the thing with feathers.

And Max, I think, changed it to grief is a thing with feathers.

Because it is literally a thing with feathers.

I think it's to upend the idea that grief is a systematic stepping stone process to being resolved.

Anyone who's been through it, and we all do in our life, it's a.

It can blindside you with as much strength as it does when you first encounter it two years down the line, three, four years down the line, or it can be.

And it's the hope, I guess, in Emily Dickinson's poem is also about love.

I think, you know, you can't love without loss.

That's kind of where you put your risk at your heart, at.

I love the sense that the mixing of those two metaphors, because to me, it says that there is hope, that there is something on the other side of grief, and

That there's a redemption, which, again, is love.

This is the manifestation of the thing with Feathers in the movie.

Well, look, first of all, this amazing sculptor created this maquette for us, Hicks as her name.

So these kind of half man, half creature And Eric Lampert, this incredible physical actor, was wearing that weight on his head and on stilts to give it this otherworldly height and presence in these very small domestic environments, because he just pushes himself in there, like grief does.

We always wanted David Thewlis to do the voice, who does provide the voice for Crow, which is the all encompassing presence of him in the film.

But we hadn't secured him at the time, but

Eric knew about it and did his best David Thewlis impression.

So I'm acting with a man who's about sort of 8ft tall with a crow head, going and talking like David Hewlett, like Manchester, you know, just.

And trying to give a very sort of nuanced psychological portrait of a man losing his mind in grief.

And the losing my mind bit was quite easy, but

nuances were, yeah, well, what does that mean to you as a father, to be performing?

Like, how does you connect to that character in a different way?

I was made a godfather ridiculously early.

And I've always felt paternal to children or actors that were younger than me when I started out.

Well, they hadn't done anything before this.

They are exquisite in this, but it was like capturing lightning in a jar.

And so to get them to do that, not only have the usual.

So you have the safeguarding issues, which of course are taking care of their hours, their meals, their education, all the stuff that a child should have in a normal working day.

And also then they're in this world of grief, so you have to protect them and reinforce this idea that this is just storytelling.

We're all pretending here we're different people in reality.

This is just, you know, we're having a game.

And then there are days when they are children and they were seven when they did this, and

We had the most remarkable first time feature director on this, and

he's a brilliant man called Dylan Southern.

He's a brilliant artist and a father himself, and

he would bargain with them, coax them and do whatever he could to get the shot.

But in this instance, he went, okay, yeah, I understand.

And he had to walk around with that and lipstick sort of smeared on his mouth like the Joker.

Even more drunk, just all over the place.

And at the same time, in front of a crew being called Weak Man.

And I thought, I don't know if I could imagine Ridley Scott getting the shot this way.

This is a man who's willing to compromise a lot and has the integrity of his humility intact to make this work.

And, you know, like anything on a small, small budget, independent film, you're working out of necessity, which, as we know, is the mother of all invention.

And great things came of it, including that anecdote, I guess, but, you know, Poor man.

Well, Benedict, thank you so much for being here.

The Thing with Feathers is in theaters November 28th.

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Grief Manifests As An Eight Foot Tall Crow In Benedict Cumberbatch's "The Thing with Feathers"

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