Benedict Cumberbatch had a big secret to hide in regards to his character from Star Trek Into Darkness. It turns out, he let that secret slip to one very worthy person.
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Cumberbatch was a guest on The Graham Norton Show, where he revealed how he revealed his secret.
“To one person who I thought deserved to know, and that was Stephen Hawking,” Cumberbatch revealed. “We were into our third margarita, I think, and I decided to tell him and he, literally, apart from the agents who told me the news and the people who were employing me were the only people that were supposed to know. So yeah, I told him.”
The secret was almost certainly the truth about Cumberbatch’s character, John Harrison. In the film, it is revealed that Harrison is actually Khan Noonien Singh, one of the most iconic villains in Star Trek franchise history. The original Khan was played by Ricardo Montalban and challenged Captain Kirk in the classic Star Trek episode “Space Seed” and again in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Khan was the most prominent genetically-engineered augment warlord during Earth’s Eugenics Wars. When the tide finally turned against Khan and the other warlords, Khan and his people were cryogenically frozen, loaded aboard the SS Botany Bay, and left earth.
In the prime timeline, it was Kirk and the Enterprise who discovery the Botany Bay in space and woke Khan, setting off the events of “Space Seed.” In the Kelvin timeline, it was Admiral Alexander Marcus who discovered the Botany Bay. He woke Khan, gave him the false identity of John Harrison, and forced the former warlord to design weapons in preparation for war against the Klingon Empire, including the Dreadnaught-class vessel christened the USS Vengeance. Khan eventually rebelled and, believing that his crew had been killed, tried to destroy Starfleet.
Stephen Hawking, one of the most famous scientists in modern history, is the only person to cameo as himself in an episode of Star Trek. He played a holographic version of himself in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Six episode “Descent” in 1993.
Hawking died in March at the age of 76.
All three Kelvin timeline Star Trek movies – Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond – are all available now on home media.
