What monsters hide in the darkest corners of our minds? 

Eric, the emotional thriller from playwright and screenwriter Abi Morgan (The Hour, The Iron Lady, The Split) and director Lucy Forbes (This Is Going To Hurt, The End of the F***ing World), and starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Patrick Melrose, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar shorts, The Power of the Dog) as Vincent Anderson, explores the concept of both physical and psychological monsters. For Vincent, the successful, yet troubled creator of an ’80s children’s show Good Day Sunshine, the brooding monster lurking around every corner is both. He’s also big, blue and white, and goes by the name Eric. 

But Vincent’s real life is far more frightening than the imaginary beast that haunts him. His 9-year-old son, Edgar (Ivan Howe), goes missing in the gritty streets of 1985 New York City — where structural inequity has led to an addiction epidemic and civil unrest. Full of self-loathing and guilt around Edgar’s disappearance, Vincent, a leading puppet maker and puppeteer, clings to his son’s drawings of a blue monster puppet, Eric, convinced that if he can get the beast onto his TV show, Edgar will see it and come home. But while Vincent works to get the creature on screen, his mental health deteriorates, and he begins to imagine Eric invading his daily life. 

“I think there’s a kind of Hansel and Gretel [story] to it,” Morgan tells Tudum. “We are playing with those ideas that the boy gets lost in the dark, dark woods, and the king goes to try and find him. And there are monsters, pitfalls, and dangers that they have to find their way through. I was also playing with the fact that there are chains of responsibility and consequence, and this is a man who has to start to face the consequence of his actions.”

Along Vincent’s journey to find his son — and face down his inner demons and fraying marriage to his wife, Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann) — we meet Detective Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) of the NYPD’s Missing Persons Unit, who’s also on a quest to find another missing child, a Black teen whose disappearance garnered less attention in the media than that of Vincent’s son. A queer Black man, Ledroit works daily to hide his sexuality and his personal life with long-term lover William (Mark Gillis), but when his secret becomes an obstacle at work, Ledroit must contend with how to simultaneously protect his identity and solve the cases. 

We caught up with Cumberbatch to talk about the influences behind Eric, learning to be a puppeteer, and the dark side of ’80s New York City. 

Erik Carter for Netflix

What research did you do for the role?

One of the pieces of research I did, along with [watching the documentary] Dark Days, which is about the mole people of the subway system, [was watching a show about legendary Muppets creator] Jim Henson’s puppet workshop and how that began and the Frank Oz [puppeteer and Henson collaborator] relationship. [Henson] started out with these late night, very dark satirical skits that were adverts, and then turned to early childhood, early education — math and language and early learning. It’s done in the most profoundly evolved, inclusive, diverse, and realistic way. Despite [the skits] being puppets, [they feature] a range of characters and people on-set dealing with everything from death to love to inclusion. It was an amazing, amazing, amazing experiment. That’s when the electric babysitter does have value as a medium for education, because early schoolers, parents who are struggling, [and] inner-city kids can [all] see their lives reflected in this beautiful narrative between the imagined world and the real world.

One of the many things I love about my job is this ability to acquire skills that have no purpose in your life other than a moment in your storytelling history as an actor. What a privilege that is — learning how to be a creator and a maker and an operator of puppets. I didn’t think I’d be doing this at age 47. It’s amazing.

Puppet operator Olly Taylor appears in the costume for the majority of Eric’s scenes, but in the last episode we see you wearing it. What was it like wearing the Eric suit?

When I first put the headset on in a scene we shot in a subway in New York, I literally teared up. I cried. I thought, “My God, this man has done this for five months. How on earth has he remained sane?”

It’s so hard. He had additional cameras that were like CCTV footage of what he was doing — but no actual vision through his eyes. And often that equipment was going wrong. It’s heroic. So even the little bit I did, I was like, “Right, OK, I’ve got to honor what he’s already done.” It’s pretty spectacular.

Which ’80s shows shaped your world as a kid? 

Whether it was the likes of Knight Rider, Airwolf, Sesame Street, and The Muppets, Fraggle Rock, and all that stuff — I was a very enthusiastic cultural tourist who wanted to be [in America], and be American and have this as my life. It seemed like the place to have a childhood when I was growing up. So that was my kind of initiation to ’80s New York.

I didn’t know what I now know, what this drama exposes, which is that the ’80s was a kind of death of the idealism of the ’60s and ’70s, and [a period] of post–Vietnam War explosion of capitalist greed and the freewheeling market economy. The relevance of that is that we’re only now reaping — in a digital age with megalithic, monoculture companies — the rewards of that era, but we haven’t resolved the resulting crises at all.

Ludovic Robert/Netflix

Why do you think Vincent clings to Eric, this figment of his imagination, to get him through the horror of his child going missing?

Eric is a creation of Edgar’s, and Vincent somehow holds onto that through all the accusations of insanity, however chaotic his mind is. He holds onto that because he knows that that is the medium that connects him with his child, that it is the only possible means by which he can lure his child out of the unknown into the light again. And a man who’s been the reason his child has disappeared into an ugly, terrifying, and threatening city cannot face the idea that he [could be] dead.

The series uses Vincent and Edgar as a way to tell a larger story of New York, from high society down into the subways. What was that like to explore?

Vincent (and Edgar to a degree) pinballs through all of those worlds — home, the police department, the subway, the parks, the streets, and back alleys of New York — through homelessness, through addiction, through mental illness. And apart from [experiencing] racism and homophobia, [Vincent] suffers or walks alongside the suffering of all of those people. 

Ledroit, in a way, is at the apex of all these crises. He’s a gay man with a dying lover who [experiences] institutional racism and homophobia, as well as having to overcome corruption, solve the crime, find a missing child, and bring resolution to a mother whose son has been overlooked by the system — again, because of racism and classism.

Creator Abi Morgan called this series a Hansel and Gretel story, where a kid leaves home and goes on a journey into the darkness. Did you see it that way?

It is a Hansel and Gretel tale. He’s looking for the child that's gotten lost in the wilderness. But unlike Hansel and Gretel, his child has been catapulted into the unknown by Vincent’s parenting failures, which were brought about by his own trauma. That [sense of] failure, that his parents passed on to him, has made his relationship with his own child, his workplace, and his marriage toxic. 

I feel this is a fable, drawing on magical elements of puppetry and fairy tales. But it really takes us on this odyssey through a period, which we are still in, of being lost. [It brings] us to the realization that, only through profound connection — hearing and seeing and truth-telling, and being present — can we parent our children, can we care for our children and the damaged child inside us, and stop repeating the same mistakes so the abused becomes the abuser. Only then can we break the cycle and evolve.

That is kind of what the whole odyssey is about. It has all the looks of a thriller, with all the psychological struggle, the real-world causality of an imploding marriage, a mental health crisis, and all the other societal elements around the central message, [which] is the redemptive power that children can offer their parents.

Erik Carter for Netflix

How has Vincent been affected by his own father’s parenting?

Obviously it goes back and back. In [poet Philip] Larkin’s words, “Man hands on misery to man. / It deepens like a coastal shelf.” Vincent has experienced a loveless childhood where mental health was dealt with with a prescription, and a best-seen-and-not-heard kind of Victorian attitude to child-rearing. [He had] a brittle mother who’s in a subservient relationship to a dominant military man who’s turned his energy to being a tycoon of capitalism. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth or in Hell’s Kitchen [circa Vincent’s time], you suffer a loveless childhood the same. That creates deep, deep trauma, and it makes you incapable of being loved or loving yourself because you are constantly holding on to that recognition that you didn’t have what every child needs, which is to be seen, heard, loved, held, and accepted.

Does Vincent break the cycle?

What Vincent heroically — I guess in his own way — manages to do, is to pull free of that cycle of abuse and not be terrified of his father anymore. He’s able to stand up to him and be honest about not respecting him.

In the last scene, when Edgar is wearing the Eric suit, does Vincent feel pride that his son is wearing the costume? Or does he feel fear that his son could eventually turn out like him, with the same inner demons?

That’s very interesting. I hadn’t had that thought. No, because [Edgar] is inhabiting it, it’s not inhabiting him. He’s in control of his creation. It’s not something that manifests outside. I think there’s no fear in Vincent of seeing Edgar as Eric. In fact, the opposite: He’s moved that his offering is a two-way reciprocation. It’s like he’s created something out of his child’s creation, and then Edgar is taking ownership of it again as he did at the beginning. It is Edgar’s to have, and that, in a way, is a very profound token of what fathering is, which is handing the baton on. It’s like, “No, you have this now. I will guard you. I will keep you safe as best I can. I will provide boundaries and love and nourishment for you, but ultimately this is yours now.”

Watch Eric on Netflix.

Watch the Eric Trailer