Benedict Cumberbatch confirms he has no plans to quit Sherlock

The lead actor will stick with the role as long as his character is 'developing'

Sherlock's Benedict Cumberbatch is going nowhere, he says, so long as he is 'challenged' in the role (Getty Images)

Fans of BBC drama Sherlock can breathe a sigh of relief – yes, we might not be seeing any new episodes until 2016, but lead star Benedict Cumberbatch has no intention of quitting.

The actor says he will continue in the titular role until his character begins to stagnate. “I’ll keep doing it as long as [Sherlock] grows, as long as I feel he’s developing and there’s stuff we’re all being challenged by and that it’s being loyal to the original stories as well,” he told USA Today.

“I won’t say it’s changed my life because I had a huge break at the same time as this role first came to fruition,” the 37-year-old continued. “It was sort of a perfect storm of all mediums coming together at the same time – television, film and theatre, even some radio.”

Earlier this week, a Meet the Filmmakers event in London saw Cumberbatch and John Watson actor Martin Freeman reveal that the Sherlock creators had cut a ‘ gay club scene’ from the third series.

Hype has built-up around the detective duo’s supposed ‘bromance’ since the first episode aired in 2010, but when Watson’s stag party was filmed in “The Sign of Three”, fans missed out on some drunken footage.

“Doing the drunk stuff was lovely but I regret there was one bit of that drunk stuff that was missing,” Freeman said. “There was the gay club scene. Why didn’t that get in? We got mullered in a gay club and all these topless guys were going by.”

Co-creator and writer Steven Moffat teased a possible “four or five year” wait until the next series, with Cumberbatch joking that he could answer “Errrr, errrr, errr” for at least two years when asked about what might happened next.

Cumberbatch has recently been cast in Sergei Bodrov’s crime thriller Blood Mountain and is believed to be in talks to play the lead in a West End production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Read more:

Benedict Cumberbatch reveals gay club scene was cut from series three

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