This Chocolate Benedict Cumberbatch Puts Your Easter Candy to Shame
Matt Alexander
You may think you overdosed on Easter candy, but your chocolate bunny — be it hollow or solid — has nothing on the life-size chocolate sculpture of actor Benedict Cumberbatch UKTV unveiled on Good Friday to celebrate the launch of a new channel, Drama, on its on-demand service, Play.
Six feet tall, made of 88 pounds of Belgian milk chocolate (500 melted bars of it!) and apparently not an April Fools’ Day joke, the sculpture of the Sherlock star, who was voted Britain’s “dishiest” dramatic actor in a poll of U.K. women, took a crew of eight (including a sculptor, a chocolatier and a model maker) 250 hours to create. Cast, carved and then painstakingly refined, the meticulously detailed 33-percent-cocoa creation — dubbed Benedict Chocobatch — was crafted according to Cumberbatch’s measurements and red carpet appearances.
The lines and creases of his hands are super-impressive, but apparently the actor’s head proved most challenging for the creators.
“The striking thing about Benedict is he’s got quite a thin face, but he has quite a large head,” lead sculptor Tim Simpson observed. “So trying to get that look right is quite tricky.”
The yummy dummy was unveiled last Friday in the London shopping center Westfield Stratford City. Watch a video about its construction below.