Benedict Cumberbatch Responds To Sam Elliott’s Power Of The Dog Criticism

After 1883 actor Sam Elliott tore apart Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog last week, calling it a “piece of s—t” and criticizing the film’s gay themes, Benedict Cumberbatch shared his two cents.

In a recent interview for BAFTA Film Sessions, Cumberbatch alluded to Elliott’s comments: “I’m trying very hard not to say anything about a very odd reaction that happened the other day on a radio podcast over here without meaning to stir up the ashes of that.”

“I don’t want to get into the details of it … but somebody really took offense to — I haven’t heard it so it’s unfair for me to comment in detail on it — to the West being portrayed in this way,” Cumberbatch said.

He continued, “And beyond that reaction — that sort of denial that anybody could have any other than a hetero-normative existence because of what they do for a living or where they’re born, there’s also a massive intolerance within the world at large towards homosexuality still, towards an acceptance of the other, of any kind of difference, and no more so I guess than in this prism of conformity of what’s expected of a man in the Western archetype mold of masculinity. So I think to deconstruct that through Phil, to look at that, it’s not a history lesson.”