Benedict Cumberbatch finds Hollywood's superhero diet "horrific"

On Marvel movies, the stars have professional chefs, trainers, dietitians, etc., weighing in to say, “‘He needs to be on this many calories a day, he needs to have five meals, he needs to have a couple of boiled eggs between those five meals or some kind of high protein snack,'” Cumberbatch explains. But “going back to responsibility and resourcefulness and sustainability, it’s just like, ‘What am I doing? I could feed a family with the amount I’m eating.’ It’s a grossly wasteful industry,” he admits. “Think about set builds that aren’t recycled, think about transport, think about food, think about housing, but also light and energy. The amount of wattage you need to create daylight and consistent light in a studio environment. It’s a lot of energy.”

Steven Strange has been absent from the MCU since 2022’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, and he won’t return for Avengers: Doomsday. However, he promised that he has a big role in Secret Wars, and in the meantime he seems to really be enjoying a more indie movie era (plus, he doesn’t have to eat five meals and several snacks a day). On the podcast, Cumberbatch notes that actors sometimes get shit for raising the alarm about on-set sustainability issues, but “As a producer, I’m really hot on that, and… I try to push the green initiative, the green handshake, into every agreement I can,” he says. For example, “You don’t have to give the crew plastic bottles. If you’re in the middle of a desert and you can’t get glass bottles there, fair enough. But we’re in the 21st century.”