Cumberbatch Eco Doc 'How to Live on Earth' Hits YouTube — SkimNews
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- Benedict Cumberbatch is promoting his new documentary 'How to Live on Earth,' which launches on YouTube on September 20 and features his monologues filmed in London's Natural History Museum alongside short films about Indigenous activists, biologists, and Barack Obama's former White House chef experimenting with alternative proteins.
- Cumberbatch, who has been vegan for roughly two decades, was forced to abandon the diet while filming 'The Courier' — directors required him to eat lean meat with no fibre for two weeks to authentically portray captured British spy Greville Wynne, and the extreme regime left him ill with plummeting blood sugar.
- The actor now eats ethically sourced meat — opting for UK venison from culled deer because of overpopulation — and works with the Green Rider movement, which is currently scaling up by working with Disney on the Avengers UK project to push emissions-cutting clauses into acting contracts.
- Cumberbatch visited Extinction Rebellion protests in 2019 and has criticized recent UK government crackdowns on climate protesters, arguing democracy should permit 'peaceful action, even if it is direct action' despite long sentences handed down to road-blockers.
- The documentary features biologist Dan O'Neill, a big-cat researcher who spends weeks at a time in remote rainforests; he praises the YouTube release because 'it democratises our message for the entire world' and lets Indigenous communities see themselves represented.
- Cumberbatch advocates valuing living ecosystems over extracted resources, arguing an elephant alive is worth more than its tusk and proposing a financial model where people invest as 'shareholders in nature' so ecosystems can be 'monetised to be protected.'
Why it matters: Cumberbatch's Green Rider movement is in talks with Disney to make emissions-cutting a contractual condition for actors on the UK Avengers shoot, turning his September 20 YouTube documentary launch from a film promo into a live test case for whether Hollywood's tentpole franchises will bind themselves to green production standards.
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