Johnlock: The Acting and What it Means for TJLC
Let me tell you a story. It’s about acting. It’s been told quite a lot, and the exact quotes change each time it gets told, but the punchline is always the same.
Dustin Hoffman and Sir Laurence Olivier are on the set of the Marathon Man. Hoffman’s character has stayed up three nights, so Hoffman walks onto the set after 3 days without sleep to be more realistic. Olivier, concerned, asks him why he looks so tired. Hoffman tells him. Olivier is very surprised. After a moment, he replies, “Try acting, dear boy…it’s much easier.”
What does this have to do with Johnlock? Everything.
…IT’S FULL OF
STARSQUOTES
I MUST SOURCE THEM
“There’s a great charge you get from playing him, because of the volume of words in your head and the speed of thought – you really have to make your connections incredibly fast. He is one step ahead of the audience, and of anyone around him with normal intellect. They can’t quite fathom where his leaps are taking him. Zip zip zip. But you catch me in the car on the way home after and I am, ‘Whoahhh!’” He does a theatrical wilt in his chair.“
(The Guardian interview with Benedict Cumberbatch, July 2010 [x])
“it doesn’t mean that I do a lot of good takes, it just means I like doing a lot of takes. And various rhythms come in with different characters and situations…it’s the 18th [take] sometimes. I can’t remember what my record is, it’s pretty heinous.”
(Benedict Cumberbatch: In Conversation for BAFTA New York, February 2014 [x])
"My default state is wariness.”
(Martin Freeman, The Daily Mail, November 2009 [x])
“Martin and I didn’t really know each other before Sherlock, but he walked into the audition and he raised my game.”
(Benedict Cumberbatch for What’s On TV, December 2013 [x])
“Martin did this amazing thing of having a military bearing. It’s something that’s in the [Conan Doyle] stories all the time. Sherlock’s always deducing things in the original stories based on people’s military bearing, and you think—‘What is that?’ Martin came in and did it—‘Oh look, he’s a soldier.’ He looks, he stands like a soldier. Everything about it worked.”
(Mark Gatiss, Sherlock: Anatomy of a Hit [x])
“I’ve got a pretty good musical ear and I can pick things up. But that wasn’t going to be good enough. I really wanted to do it justice. Not do it as a sketch: “Oh yah!” So I worked hard at it. I stayed in the accent all day on set. You’ve got to make it a habit, get that muscle memory.”
“I think acting is all about the other people. Sounds like a worthy thing to say but it’s true. I like the odd day on my own in the course of a film because you’ve got complete control and you can indulge yourself and all that sort of stuff. But the best work comes out of at least another person being in the room.”
(Martin Freeman, The Guardian April 2014 [x])
After reading so many of your Metas i truly believe Sherlock is in love with John. But i still can’t 100% believe John also loves him. Sometimes I feel john defends himself by saying, “i’m not gay”, “we’re not a couple.”, and so forth and of course there are all those gifs that has John staring at sherlock’s neck. I mean i think john is attracted to sherlock, but not “in love”. I mean sherlock died and gave up his life for him. Where’s the big moment John realizes he’s in love with sherlock?
deducingbbcsherlock-deactivated:
Ok ok, I guess we can’t count the unaired pilot as canon.
I bet others have different readings of this (and I’d love to hear them). For me, these are the big moments.
Chapter 3 of It Doesn’t Usually Start with a Wedding is up.
romantic-chamber-of-the-heart:
“Look, sir, if Holmes and Watson are lovers, so what? Is there anything wrong with that?”
“Yes, constable, there is — because sex plays no part in these stories whatsoever!”
As it turns out, Rowan Atkinson was fifteen years ahead on the Sherlock/Watson Slash Debate.
I like this constable!
In which Rowan Atkinson represents every shrill anti-shipper’s paper thin argument. “They CHAT!”
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
The moment Johnlock became canon.
The moment Johnlock became canon.
I was just idly musing over Johnlock today, as one does, when a thought struck me.
If Sherlock’s structure is planned out in a 5-series arc as is often mentioned, how telling would it be if the stag night sequence, wherein John and Sherlock touch each other with affection (if not outright intent)…
bby, you so smart. And I agree with you entirely. That was the moment at which the Sherlock world shifted on it’s axis, and everything we’d been wondering and hoping and thinking about all this time came to a head and literally went…
I wonder if Sherlock even allowed himself to consciously think about John like that until that night. Like “Oh, shit, this impossible thing I want is actually maybe possible. Except he’s marrying someone else, and now my heart’s completely shattered.”
I think Sherlock had thought about it prior to that, but had never considered that John would actually reciprocate. I think he actually realised the depth and colour of his own feelings during the time John was angry at him after he came back.
He’d thought they’d be together again, like old times, and hadn’t thought much past that. I think when he was forced to, by John’s rejection, forced to think about renegotiating this relationship – that’s when light dawned for Sherlock. I don’t think he ever considered that John had been feeling the same way for two years before The Fall.
Not until this moment.
The curiousity with which he looks at John’s hand on him, the “What is he…? OH.” face is so apparent. He knew, he knew what John was trying to do.
Oh yes, he thought about it. I think I meant, like, he THOUGHT about it.
That was super articulate, I know.
And he reciprocated. HE RECIPROCATED.
Sherlock’s hand on John’s shoulder is so important and it doesn’t get near enough attention IMO.
