Benedict Cumberbatch remembers very clearly the day he first met Eric, his co-star in the new Netflix series in which they are both about to appear. “When he first came to set, it was, it just... it was very fucking funny. Because he couldn’t see; he banged into walls. There was this huge lumbering thing going, ‘Oh fuck,’ and ping-ponging around the set.”Abi Morgan, the British playwright and screenwriter who wrote the six-part series, also called Eric, was there that day, too.
But, as they so often do, the monster has other ideas, and as Vincent becomes increasingly unhinged and his search pulls him deeper into New York’s underbelly, imaginary Eric is by his side — on the streets, on the subway — as a confidant and, sometimes, an accomplice.