Benedict Cumberbatch: Eastenders producer says Sherlock actor wants to appear in BBC soap opera

'And he says he’ll come and do it but he is slightly busy'

(Getty)

Benedict Cumberbatch may be a leading man in Hollywood but that doesn’t mean he has forgotten about his roots in British TV.

The acclaimed actor, who rose to international fame playing Sherlock Holmes in the BBC’s modern adaption of the Conan Doyle novels, is being lined up for a guest appearance in Eastenders.

According to executive producer Dominic Treadwell Collins, Cumberbatch has said he is keen to put on a cockney accent and appear in Albert Square – the only problem is his busy schedule.

“I really want Benedict Cumberbatch to come and do a turn,” Collins said at the Radio Times TV Festival. “And he says he’ll come and do it but he is slightly busy.”

While it may seem an unlikely partnership, the pair go way back: “He was the year above me at school and I remember doing the Shakespeare play ‘As You Like It’.

“I remember afterwards ¬running up to my mum to see if I was any good and she said, ‘Yeah, you were fine but that Benedict is an actor’.”

If he does make an appearance Cumberbatch may want to stay away from the Queen Vic. Danny Dyer, who plays the pub’s landlord in the BBC soap, previously said if Cumberbatch walked into a pub “he’d be annihilated by geezers, he’d be bullied."

Dyer told Radio Times: "He couldn’t play a kid from a working-class estate, but I couldn’t do what he does either.

I think that I could play Sherlock, though, if I did it my way. Benedict’s brilliant and the lines roll off his tongue, but that role is about being highly intelligent rather than posh.”