Back when we were younger and innocent and Barack Obama was president – God, how I miss those days – we enjoyed the hell out of the promotional tour for War Horse, mostly because some genius publicist put Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch in the same room to do a day of press junketing together. Those videos are still available and they are lovely. Benedict and Tom had such a natural chemistry together, making each other laugh and creating years’ worth of memes and GIFs and bromance slash-fiction ideas. Well, now that we’re older and America is rotting from within, someone decided to put Hiddleston and Cumberbatch in a room to do an interview to promote Avengers: Infinity War. The problem was the one-second-delayed international link-up from Good Morning America to London. The problem was also that they put Tom Holland in between Bendy and Hiddles. Behold, one awkward-ass interview:
"I'm really stressed right now because this is live, so I'm just trying to sit on it and let these guys do all the talking." – notorious secret-spiller @TomHolland1996 on @Avengers: #InfinityWar.
Full interview with him, @twhiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch: pic.twitter.com/lcTmsr3iGM
— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 9, 2018
I mean, it’s fine. But I expect more from the Marvel press office. Tom Holland is the wet blanket here: it would have been more than fine to do a separate, one-on-one interview with Holland, and then let Hiddles and Bendy sit there together and make each other laugh and try to out-accent each other. Stilted and awkward. That’s what this was.
And here’s Tom hanging out with Sebastian Stan and Letitia Wright on her Instagram Story. Why not put Letitia and Hiddles together for everything? That would be fun!!
🎥| Sebastian with Tom Hiddleston on Letitia Wright’s instagram story! pic.twitter.com/jvzkFubjXJ
— Sebastian Stan Updates (@TheSebNews) April 9, 2018
Photos courtesy of WENN.
His hair in that top picture, I just want to run my hands through it.
I want to pull it forward. Stop pushing it up and back, Thomas!
I was thinking along those lines too. Love the curls on Hiddleston. Time to let your hair grow out, Cumby!
I’d love to see Tom’s hair that length without any product in it. Would he look like a fuzzy q-tip? How curly are the curls exactly?
I think he looks great here!
Extremely curly. Return to Cranford, second season of Wallender. Unrelated. Untamed, longer curls
You spoke my mind!! I wanna shout, Me Too, ME TOO!!
Never thought I’d like him with ginger and fuzzy beard, but he just looks so warm and oddly adorable.
I don’t like Tom H. and I don’t like Benedict C. either. They are good actors, but they both give me British posh asexual vibes, I just can’t put them in the same sentence with “attractive” and “sexy”. The only endearing people in this story, for me, are Sebastian Stan and Letitia Wright.
You seem as confused as the TV people. There are two Tom Hs. Hiddleston and Holland start with the same letter.
Sightings of LEGS have been so rare lately that I’ll take him in any combination. And the grey shoes, which are probably the fourth pair by now, have returned. I did find it funny when LEGS said that nobody named Tom or Chris was allowed to see a full script and he seemed to have a much better rapport with Holland than Cumberbatch did.
The veranda is open with pitchers of Comet Sophies available throughout the duration of the Infinity Wars PR tour.
Oh wonderful! I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the veranda yesterday, I was off searching for runaway curls. But I hope there’s a spot for me today!
I read that as “pictures” of Comet Sophies and was like….well that’s no use to me
Me thinks you may have had one too many pitchers of Comet Sophies yesterday.
Pour me up something! I don’t care what it is. I need something because I’ve seen smiling Hiddles pictures from Korean. Le sigh
We have soju and bokbunja for the Korean part of the tour. And yes, I saw the video of that airport arrival too.
There are gifs of his hair at the airport. I was laughing at first but dang that’s some good looking hair. I liked it at the Emmy roundtable interview but this longer style is wonderful.
Send Collin, I need a refill. Thanks.
Not a fan of Ben or Tom Hiddlestone, but that joke from ben about being another Marcel character and being wooden was really funny and evryone just kind of sit there. And Tom Holland needs to be preped by Marvel. He seems like he would rather die than promote this movie and this was his vibe at arguably most fun shows there is – the Grahqm Norton show
He might just be afraid of saying something he shouldn’t. I’m sure the Marvel people have told him to keep a lid on it, mostly and to Not. Spoil. Anything! Haha.
Ok but what about Tom Hiddleston.
Poor Tom is literally afraid to say anything because he could spill. He was a lot more lively during Spider-Man press. I also think it’s a little of Star shock too.
They should pair him with Leticia because they are both young and would vibe well
He’s afraid he’ll give away plot points because he has had a problem with that in the past.
I keep reading this and don’t understand. Surely Marvel preps them on certain talking points that they’re cleared to discuss, right? And it’s his job, as an actor, to not spoil anything for the movie he was paid millions for and wants people to go see?
I know some actors spill the wrong beans on occasion, but the fact that he’s legitimately afraid to speak too much and has a history of giving spoilers away is bizarre to me. That’s your job, man!
I’m aware. Its why i know he’s fearful of dropping anything.
Thing is none of the actors got a full script as to keep everything under wraps. So many moving parts I doubt anyone outside MAYBE RDJ knew the full plot of the movie going in.
Marvel is doing everything possible to keep these next two movies on lockdown
Has Marvel given Mark Ruffalo’s phone back to him yet? His social media hiatus probably had little to do with IW, but the timing of it was pretty humorous since he’s notorious for spilling secrets too.
I honestly don’t care about this movie. And I thought spiderman was bad, Im OK with Holland but for reason I thought his spiderman was dumb. Meh
A lot of the awkwardness here came from the bad interviewers asking boring questions and also not taking the time lapse into account (why do interviewers do this??) so they ended up talking over each other.
Is it me, or have Bendy and Tiddles got less fun over the past couple of years. And not just this interview. It’s like they both lost a bit of their sense of humour or are much less willing to have a joke.
They’ve both had to deal with a lot of s**t in terms of fame impacting on their private lives over the past couple of years (TH becoming the press’s whipping boy and laughing stock over the whole Taylor Swift thing, BC with those deranged stalker fans making up lies about his marriage and kids being fake). They’re probably just reticent and less yee-haw about being famous now. Every single famous person I’ve worked with has gone through something similar; at first it’s great then it bites you and you withdraw, then hopefully you come to some kind of even keel.
Yes, I have noticed that too, actually…maybe it’s simply the process of getting older and wiser…or maybe with all the new ‘heros’ coming onto Marvel recently, they may feel a little diminished.
except Benedict is one of the newbies. He’s not part of the outgoing A-team.
I think its more of what Meggles said which is the personal crap that has come their way from their fanbase has been heavy
I’m just thinking of the day at the races they did for War Horse promo with Patrick Kennedy, the sartorial choices were bizarre:
https://youtu.be/6RsxDn0ualc
The weather adds to the hilarity of that day.
Benedict’s hat, Patrick’s hat, Tom’s tie!
The seersucker striped suit, the beige checked three-piece, the two unpressed button down white shirts surrounding the one ironed white shirt!
They did a really nice little video on a London rooftop for GMA either before or after their appearance. It was much more comfortable to watch, and Tom made a “TH and TH” reference, which was cute. They were standing in the rain and the hair still looked perfect. Ugh, Tom. Why must you always draw me back in?
I thought the interview was fine, even charming at times. If anyone made it uncomfortable it was the GMA people. Morning show anchors are a weird lot.
Weird, and in my opinion, not very nimble. Their skillset skews sharply to being able to read a teleprompter in a way that sounds spontaneous and unrehearsed. Just don’t ask them to have a cogent thought of their own without advance warning.
Wow, Tom (H)…Call me!
Which one? Or is is this an All of the Above type deal?
I adore Tom Holland, and even I agree that it was a bad decision to add him into the mix. Ben and Hiddles have great candor but Holland’s stagefright/I-have-to-shut-up-ness put a damper on it. I agree that he should have been put with Letitia. They’d be so cute together!!! Also, is it just me or did he look really unusually young during this whole event??
He IS young. He’s 21 and almost everyone else in these films is closer to 40 or older. They wanted someone who was still a teenager when they shot the first MCU Spider-Man so he would seem believable as a teenager when interacting with RDJ, Chris Evans, and the others
Dear Marvel, may I politely request that Tom (the elder) and Benedict (the homely) not do ALL their promo together? This may very well be the last we see of Tom for what may be years, and I’d rather not resort to photoshopping BC out of every photo so I can gaze adoringly at Hiddles without being annoyed by the guy standing next to him. I don’t like the look of him, you see. Thank you for your understanding in this difficult time. Sincerely, me.
Well they have him with adorable Letitia and charming Sebastian in an interview!
https://youtu.be/_aFcL8DKwmI
What a sweet interview! Thanks for sharing.
I second that request. If you must pair him with others, the younger TH is okay because they seem to have a nice rapport or Chemboy or Evans or Chadwick or Paul Bettany, please.
I don’t mind Ben. I dunno I miss these two together.
same. he was awesome with the fans and the doctor strange cosplayer (they’re on twitter and very, very happy) at the london thing
I think little TH (Holland) did alright. He was a bit nervous more so than Benny and big TH but that’s pretty normal. Plenty of celebrities, even more experienced ones still get a case of the nerves on interviews. I think the main issue was the delay and the fact that it was live on GMA which is prime-time US morning show with a huge mainstream audience and not some internet magazine, fan based media where they can be a little more mischievous and let down their hair.
His interviews with Letitia and Sebastian were super awkward. In the Insta video they’re both getting down and TH’s just standing there awkwardly like someone’s dad at a party, and in the interview Letitia is clearly OVER Tom immediately jumping in to give ten minute answers to every question before giving them a chance to speak.
Which interviews were you watching, and in what alternate universe?
I saw an interview and they were all having a good time. No one was ‘over’ anyone.
The interview I saw of the three of them, everything was pretty evenly spaced.
i saw two. one was fine, one was a little awkward but again like it’s got to be weird to promote something you can’t quite talk about
what i thought was kinda odd was Waititi just telling that fan who asked about a loki solo movie “No.” like i know the dude’s sense of humor is dry but maybe he shouldn’t have responded so curtly idk
Really? It seemed fine to me but to each their own!
Saw that interview as well. They all spoke pretty evenly in time it seemed to me.
I’m not a fan (the only Marvel movie I’ve seen is Black Panther), so I’m sure I have a different perspective/bias, but watch the video. Every question, TH leaps to answer it first without even pausing to see if the others have something to say, and gives incredibly long-winded rambling answers going into his childhood and all kinds of stuff, like “I have to express every thought in my head” when the others are patiently waiting their turn to speak, and then Letitia and the other guy both give mostly very short answers. It just comes across as a bit clueless and entitled to give such long multi-part answers when there are other people waiting to speak, and to always jump in to be the first one to answer.
The twitter thing, that’s the guy who directed one of the Thor movies, right? I saw that on Tumblr and the fan decided to start her own personal “mission” to convince them to do a Loki movie where she announced she was going to tweet Marvel and the director every single day until they said yes. She’d been tweeting him every single day for days when he said “no.” I’d do the same if someone announced they were going to bug me every single day until I gave in. Not like he said no in response to a single tweet.
I wonder if interviewers love interviewing Tom. They ask a question & he makes this question feel incredibly important because his answers are thoughtful (and long) but usually interesting none the less. I remember a recent question was asked of BC on the red carpet for IW where he was asked how his part in Marvel has changed things for him. And he could not come up with an answer, pausing but then saying repeatedly nothing’s really changed, then more pausing. I’m sure Tom would have said something like being part of Marvel is being part of something larger than life, how playing his character has been so rewarding, maybe even how he can now participate in Comic con which is so fun, or how Marvel has this loyal fan base that is so devoted. He just makes every question look good.