Doctor Strange 2: Benedict Cumberbatch Grew Real Goatee for Multiverse of Madness

Hold the phone — Benedict Cumberbatch went and grew himself a goatee. As he prepares to film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in the coming weeks, the Marvel actor was recently spotted doing press with his own facial hair, suggesting a departure from the prosthetic beards he wore in the past. Though some work has already started on Doctor Strange 2, it’s likely Cumberbatch himself won’t begin filming the project until after the first of the year.

The legend of Cumberbatch’s faux beard first surfaced in a red carpet interview during the premiere of the original Doctor Strange. Then, Rachel McAdams revealed the actorhad to alter his laugh for the feature so that his fake beard wouldn’t accidentally fall off.

“You know he has this wonderful facial hair in the film. Sometimes it was real and sometimes it was glued on…I hope I’m not telling tales out of school here…but if he laughed too hard, and he was always making jokes, it would come off,” McAdams told Marvel.com on the Doctor Strange red carpet.

The anecdote was subsequently confirmed by movement designer Jay Funk, the one responsible for coming up with the right look and feel for Strange’s mystical spell castings. “Benedict had to keep his facial expressions tight because of his prosthetic beard. So when he had to laugh, he sounded like Santa claus haha,” Funk tweeted in 2017.

“It’s a joy when you got a role like Dr. Strange because obviously the two things sort of tie in,” Cumberbatch previously told Watch Time India of his spirituality tying into the work of Doctor Strange. “I mean, it’s that whole movement in which Steve Ditko and Stan Lee came about because of the fusion between Eastern and Western thoughts. So it’s a part of the day job. I mean there was a fantastic force for making it a real presence in my life. I have a dear friend – a Tibetan monk who was on set quite a lot, who we meditated with when we were shooting in Nepal not long after that tragic earthquake.”

He added, “With the film we tried to make the infrastructure work to show that Nepal is open for business and that they are capable of having us. Also it’s so important for us as a collective, working on a film that’s based on an understanding that’s beyond the physical scientific realm, to try and bring ourselves into a space that’s more spiritual and my God, you know, filming in Kathmandu around the burning pyres, the Pashupatinath temple, just using those iconic parts, as well as the back streets and the people of Nepal to set that into context for cabotage. It wasn’t just window dressing, I think it was an important social statement and a real honing in for our work, but also beyond that.”

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is scheduled to hit theaters on March 25, 2022.

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