Benedict Cumberbatch Wanders Around LA, Gets Cameo in The Simpsons

For most people, having business in the same building that The Simpsons is recorded in, incidentally finding out that they were short one voice part, asking if you could do it, and then actually getting to do it would be one of those stories you’d tell triumphantly to every person you met. For Benedict Cumberbatch, star of the BBC’s Sherlock and Star Trek (and also lots of other things, but we highlight the geeky here), it was just another day.

Because that’s precisely how he got a cameo on The Simpsons:

I was at a meeting in the same place The Simpsons is recorded and heard there was a part going in an episode. I said, ‘I hate to muscle in here guys but could I record it?’ Next thing, I’m standing in a room with all those famous voices; Bart, Marge, Homer, Lisa.

It’s unclear from Cumberbatch’s statement whether he’ll be playing a Simpsonized version of himself (as sort-of imagined above, outside of his roles in film, the actor is actually blond) or a simple voice cameo as someone other than himself that goes unreferenced by the characters in the show, a tradition made most memorable by South Park‘s tradition of offering A-list actors roles as animal noises.

Either way, he’s got a pretty good pub story. Or at least he would, if he couldn’t also say “I’m Sherlock Holmes, Smaug, and a Star Trek villain.”

(story via the Evening Standard, top pic via Springfield Punx.)