There are four things we all know to be true about esteemed actor Benedict Cumberbatch. He’s handsome, he’s intelligent, he’s supremely talented, and he is absolutely terrified of the word “penguin.”
Oh wait, you didn’t know that last one? Well, you read that correctly. This London-born, university-educated thespian who has been nominated for BAFTAs, Oscars, and Emmys has played everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Strange and even Smaug, a formidable dragon, with incredible success. He’s certainly not lacking in the talent department.
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But one venture of his just wasn’t so successful. During a 2014 appearance on “The Graham Norton Show” in the United Kingdom, host Graham Norton said that when he allowed viewers to submit questions to ask Cumberbatch, one came up again and again. Of all the things people wanted to know about the actor, the request that rose to the top was this:
Ask him to say the word ‘penguin.’
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Why, you ask? Because while he was narrating a documentary about the South Pacific called “Strange Islands,” Cumberbatch didn’t just say “penguin” incorrectly. Oh no. He said it incorrectly in different ways, none of which sounded anything like “pen-quin.”
“The first one you sort of get away with,” Norton quipped to a clearly embarrassed Cumberbatch, “and then after that you lose all sense of what the word is.” He then started to play a clip for the audience.
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“And the last thing you’d expect to see here,” says the lovely English-accented voice, “is penwings.” Wait, WHAT? Okay, maybe that was just a one-off thing. Let’s keep going.
“These are Fiordland Crested Pengwings.”
UH.
“So why are these woodlands so attractive to penglings?”
Ben, come on.
“A fresh water stream through the forest makes a handy highway for a parent pengwing.”
So we’re back here again. Okay.
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“The funny thing is you don’t do this in isolation,” the red-faced Cumberbatch explained. “You have a whole team of natural history experts based in Bristol funded by you, the tax-paying public. It’s not just me sitting there in a booth going, ‘I think I know how to say penguins. I’ll say ‘pengwings.'”
He is now 100 percent terrified of the word.
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He was such a good sport about the whole thing. You’ll be laughing so hard when you hear it all in action, so definitely check out the video down below (and wait until you hear what movie was up next on his acting docket when the interview aired). Share this with your friends if it made you cackle!
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