Benedict Cumberbatch as Star Wars’ Thrawn? He Says It’s Not For Him.

Grand Admiral Thrawn is a character in the world of Star Wars that fans have been waiting for. A huge part of the extended universe, he’s the one baddie that fans have been collectively asking about time and time again. Now that he was brought up in the Disney+ world, the fanfare towards Thrawn has ramped up. But with that comes questions of who is going to play him or when we’ll get to see him onscreen. And a popular casting suggestion online has been the Sorcerer Supreme himself, Benedict Cumberbatch.

But, unfortunately for that crowd, Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t playing Thrawn—especially if he has anything to say about it, and maybe it’s time we … move on from casting Cumberbatch as Star Wars characters.

After Ahsoka asks where Thrawn is in The Mandalorian, fans have jumped at the idea of Thrawn showing up in the third season or potentially in the Star Wars: Ahsoka series. For whatever reason, fans have really clung to the idea of Benedict Cumberbatch as Thrawn, maybe because of Thrawn’s angular features that could work well with the Sherlock actor? It also doesn’t help that Cumberbatch has, in the past, talked about how he wants to be in the Star Wars universe.

Whatever the case, Collider asked Cumberbatch about whether or not he was going to be cast as Thrawn for the Disney+ Star Wars universe or if he had any interest in it. He didn’t know about the character at first, and when Collider‘s Steve Weintraub told him that he’s blue, that seemed to be the nail in the coffin for Cumberbatch.

“That’s a straight no from me, right now. There’s no way I want to be turned blue. I turned the air blue, very recently. No no, seriously, I have precious time with my children and I think sitting in a makeup chair and being painted blue, and the amount of time it would take to do that and then take it off at the end of the day might just… it’s not the right time in my life for that.”

But more than that, what if we stopped trying to come up with these (sorry) basic casting choices for characters like Thrawn? Right now, we have no idea who is going to play him or when he’ll actually be showing up. For so many of us (myself included), we thought that Richard E. Grant’s casting in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was going to be the introduction of Thrawn and were, obviously, wrong.

So until we know for sure that Thrawn is coming/here, maybe we should just let the casting wait? Or at least we know that Cumberbatch is not about to be painted blue for Star Wars.

(image: Lucasfilm)

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