I'm Chris Hewett.

Now, "Star Trek Into Darkness" is one of the most eagerly

anticipated movies of the summer.

I'm delighted now to be joined by the man who is the villain

of the piece, the man who's front and center in the

posters behind me, and the man who plays the enigmatic and

malevolent John Harrison.

It is, of course, Benedict Cumberbatch.

Hello, sir.

Thanks for joining us.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: Hello.

How are you?

Lovely to be here.

KIRK: I request permission to go after him.

MALE SPEAKER: Star Fleet is not about vendetta, Kirk.

KIRK: Maybe it should be, sir.

MALE SPEAKER: Jim, you're not actually going after

this guy, are you?

KIRK: I have no idea what I'm supposed to do.

I only know what I can do.

CHRIS HEWETT: You're a very popular man.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: Well, yeah.

Am I?

CHRIS HEWETT: I'll explain why, because we asked users in

Google+ and various other social networks to send in

questions for you, and they bombarded us.

It was like photon torpedoes.

They just bombarded us with questions.

They had many, many questions.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: I like the reference.

CHRIS HEWETT: Thank you very much.

And some of them were very personal.

They wanted to know your favorite

fruit, favorite perfume.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: That's outrageous.

That's really close to the skin.

CHRIS HEWETT: The color of your toothbrush.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: Terrible, terrible, terrible,

terrible, joke that.

[INAUDIBLE] get over it.

I can't get away with it.

My favorite toothbrush?

CHRIS HEWETT: No, the color of your toothbrush.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: The color of my toothbrush?

CHRIS HEWETT: Yeah.

I think it's very invasive.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: Yeah.

I mean, once people start to imagine what actually cleans

my teeth at night and in the morning, then I start to worry

a little bit.

I like to remain a little bit enigmatic, so the color of my

toothbrush will remain a secret.

CHRIS HEWETT: OK.

Well, we'll ignore that one.

We have some of the very best ones here.

We'll start off with the first one.

It is from Cumberbatch Web.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: Right.

CHRIS HEWETT: You may know those guys.

Adam, Montserrat, and Edrich, who all asked, roughly at the

same time, you've got an incredible fan base for your

work in "Sherlock," and working on "Star Trek"

obviously opens you to an even bigger one.

Did it intimidate you to work in a film franchise with such

a rich history, high expectations,

and a vocal fan base?

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: It's a good question.

Yes and no.

Basically, the first film, J. J.'s first outing with "Star

Trek" in 2009 made me realize that the franchise was in very

safe hands and that, to be honest, he's such an

extraordinary filmmaker and human being, if I was pleasing

his idea of what he wanted my character to be within our

version of Trekdom, then that was the only concern or

preoccupation I had to have with expectations.

Because otherwise, that way madness lies.

You're never going to be everyone's.

Someone's going to be throwing up in the corner going, this

guy is horrendous.

And that's fine.

That's allowed.

That's what the world's about.

I'm very aware, of course, of how possessive, and rightfully

so, Trekkies are.

There's a huge deal of respect I have for them because it's

not just a name for a group of fans.

It's actually about a level of knowledge and understanding of

the subject matter.

But it's a strange thing because actually, that takes

ownership of what it is, which originally was a creative

process and received by them as an audience, and now the

audience has sort of taken control of it.

So there's good and bad with that.

There's knowledge which I completely bow to and would

love to immerse myself in, and have done

since doing the film.

So yeah, I think my fears, which were rightfully there,

obviously, because of their presence--

although I have to say, a lot of them were incredibly

benevolent.

However vocal they may be about what they like or don't

like, they're opinions.

They're not going to kill me, I hope.

It's just they're normal human things who just have a real

enjoyment of quite exceptionally rich, materially

rich genre and cult that is "Star Trek."

CHRIS HEWETT: Did you tap into that when you were--

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: No, not in preparation, again, for the

same reasons.

I wanted to be free of my own fears of what I was trying to

live up to or be, and what I was joining and

being a part of.

But I can step back now a little, and I have done, and

watched a lot more than I remembered having watched

sporadically as a child, both in film and television form,

and just been blown away by the level of sophistication,

dry wit, generosity, incredible condensing of

morality plays in these episodes.

There had to have been so many issue-driven drama highlights,

whether it be the first interracial kiss, or just

tackling any kind of idea of identity and place and purpose

and belonging, and also this wonderful, Utopian ideal of

what democracy in the future could be, this

all-encompassing star fleet of a universe that's tied by

bonds of a democracy rather than war and splintered

savagery and all the other things that threaten it.

It's interesting.

I think what J. J. does so generously in a sort of

Shakespearean way, especially with my character,

is flesh that out.

So I feel that he brings that generosity in a Shakespearean

way to all of his characters in a way that the original

series does as well, and so I hope that's something that

honors their intentions and their

expectations, I should say.

CHRIS HEWETT: The second question is from Nadia, who

asks, do you have anything in common with John Harrison?

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: I look a bit like him, also I've got a

little bit more light in my eyes normally

than I do in the poster.

I'm being very facetious.

Do I have anything in common with him?

Well, yeah.

I'm very loyal.

I'm quite tribal about the people that I care about.

I'm fiercely defensive of those who are close to me and

that I love, and that includes this family of people I just

worked with on this film.

It's a powerful reflection that is seen all the way

through J. J,'s work of family and connections and

friendships and loyalty, and it pays off because it's

something that every audience member can empathize with, and

it doesn't close it down as being just a Sci-Fi film or

even an action thriller.

It's something that everyone can enjoy

for that very reason.

And I would say that is an aspect that I share with him

and Harrison to a degree, because while his acts may be

incredibly violent and vicious and unremitting, the purpose

behind them, the intention is very pure and based on a moral

drive and a very human passion to fight for the underdog, to

fight for the right and survival of his people, his

tribe, and to make sure that there is an element of balance

being redressed in the powers of the modern, or futuristic

landscape that he's in.

He's a terrorist, and one man's terrorist is another

man's freedom fighter.

And terrorism is often born, not always, but often born out

of a minority struggle for understanding and some kind of

ability to answer, politically, where they're at

with superpowers or what we deem as being democracy being

imposed on them, or despotism, or lack of rule of law.

And desperate times call for desperate measures, and so I

think it's no surprise that in popular culture, there are

lots of bad guys who have motivations that are premised

in terrorism because of that.

It's permeated our popular culture.

We're still making sense of it because it is,

sadly, a modern reality.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Outnumbered.

KIRK: So we come out shooting.

JOHN HARRISON: I am better.

KIRK: At what?

JOHN HARRISON: Everything.

CHRIS HEWETT: Sharon says--

India, Aggie, Annie, and Aurora Luna--

great name-- all want to know, is it more fun playing a

villain than a hero, and was it hard to find

your naughty side?

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: See, this is a bit like the

theater, television, radio, film question.

It's not very easy to give a generic answer because

especially this one, he's complex and he's not, I would

say, just a villain.

That's the whole point of him is you're seeing somebody who

demands a lot of sympathy and respect.

So as far as getting my badass, kickass, action man

stuff on, yeah, that's very enjoyable.

And to try and control and antagonize such

extraordinarily iconic protagonists as Kirk and Spock

was great fun, and wonderful to work that out with Chris

and Zach, who are just fantastic actors and really

good friends as well.

So that was fun.

It was great fun.

And as far as throwing people against walls, and running

through glass, and jump, and still be flying through the

air like you do in a flying dream where your pace gets big

and you suddenly start to take off, that's what's happened

whenever I've had a flying dream.

And to be able to do that in real life with a harness and

wires like a rehearsed stunt rig is just dreamy.

It's amazing.

It's really, really exciting.

And it was an incredible stunt team.

Marcus and Martin De Boer, my incredible stunt double, and I

would work out with Zach's stunt double.

All the time, we'd be fighting and rehearsing these moves,

and changing things that J. J. did like or didn't like, and

accentuating different moves and changing the psychology of

the fights.

And I'm thrilled to sit back in the theater now and watch

that and go, wow.

That's me doing that.

It's something I've always wanted to do, and I was pretty

sure I could have a good go at it, not that I

knew I could do it.

But with those kind of people helping you to do it, you

can't really fail.

I think the results are pretty ferocious.

So yeah.

The short answer is yes.

I enjoy getting my bad on.

JOHN HARRISON: You have no idea what you have done.

I will walk over your cold corpses.

CHRIS HEWETT: From Cumberbatch Collins, what was the funniest

thing that happened on set?

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: Oh gosh, there were many.

There was a very big prank played on me which by now is

probably common knowledge to this whole photon cream thing.

Basically, we go to NIF, which is this place that is Sci-Fi.

It actually exists, though, and Ed Moses, who runs it, I

think is the first person I've ever met who has yet to win a

Nobel Prize but will.

And rather like his aims, it's a question of

when, not if, at NIF.

That's my little catch phrase for NIF.

It's called the National Ignition Facility.

It's in Livermore, California, near San Francisco.