Sherlock star Martin Freeman has revealed that he did a 'terrible' audition for the hit BBC detective show Sherlock.
He told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival: “I went in for it and apparently I did a terrible audition.”
Martin said they 'sort of hated' him, thought he was a 'moody p***k' and seemed like his heart wasn’t in it.
“I might well have been a moody p***k, but I really did want it,” he said – luckily, his next audition went better.
(Gero Breloer/AP/PA)
But he added that when the BBC said they wanted to make a 90-minute show, he thought: “These fools… what’s wrong with an hour? They’re going to ruin it.”
He said he thought it seemed 'a bit silly', but added that he was 'happily, extremely wrong'.
The BBC’s latest version of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures, starring Benedict Cumberbatch alongside Freeman as Holmes and Dr Watson, updates the story to modern-day London.
(Ian West/PA)
But the new clip, unveiled to fans at Comic-Con in the United States earlier this summer, shows the pair back on familiar ground in what seems to be Victorian London complete with horse-drawn hansom cabs clattering over the cobbles in Baker Street.
It shows Cumberbatch, complete with trademark pipe and deerstalker, explaining to his landlady Mrs Hudson (Una Stubbs) why he is late coming home, saying: “That’s the trouble with dismembered country squires. They are notoriously difficult to schedule.”
Asked if he caught the killer, he says: “Caught the murderer, still looking for the legs, think we’ll call it a draw.”
(Philip Toscano/PA)
The hit show, created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, is inspired by the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.
It regularly pulls in huge audiences and has been a worldwide hit, propelling its two leading men to Hollywood and in Cumberbatch’s case an Oscar nomination.
The third series of Sherlock bowed out last year with Holmes appearing to shoot villain Charles Augustus Magnussen, and teased viewers that Andrew Scott’s criminal mastermind Moriarty may have cheated death and be set for a return.
