From Saving Worlds on Screen to Protecting the Real One 🌍 Benedict Cumberbatch

I know the Russo brothers were at South by Southwest London and they were saying we're ready. You recently said don't listen to anything I say anymore because I don't know what I'm doing. I'll trick you, I'll say the right thing or the wrong thing so I'm not going to say anything. Last time I saw you was at Trafalgar Square for the last Doctor Strange movie and I would love to see you again in there. So David Attenborough has been telling us this for years. How do we get people to stop feeling like they're getting told off and start really caring about the Earth and the world that we live in? It's a great question. I think we are past that already, it's just that it's not really landing. And I think the media cycle is sort of a bit of a victim to that narrative. But what I'd say is why don't we get excited about the things we can do and stop being obsessed about the things we can't do. Because what we can do is exciting and it's going to be more and more and more. There's an important word called efficacy which is the ability to change and that is being transformed for us right now. Well said. Benedict, I know you care. You've been screaming and shouting in the best way possible with your other half about climate change for the last few years. And I know you're also working on a special project alongside Sir David Attenborough's grandson, Will, I believe. Yes, I am. Which I think is wonderful. Actors are using the position that you have in a way that I hope people will listen because you've got this powerful voice. Exactly. To date, you get slammed if you do, slammed if you don't. But mainly slammed if you do and you're in an industry like I am and many systems like I am that are wasteful of resources, let's say. And also how we work in our environment, what we do to upcycle materials, whether they be costumes or sets, what happens to food waste, opening up doors to charities whereby the homeless can be fed. We have enough. And it's incremental changes that start as an agreement that then hopefully come as a handshake and then contractual. It's called the green rider. So that's something I'm trying to do in my own backyard. And yes, I can stand absolutely hand on hand and say, yeah, I've made poor choices in the past. I'm a human being and that's forgivable. I think, you know, there was a recent takedown piece of David Attenborough for eating chicken. I mean, the guy is an icon. If you can't get more saintly than him, think about what he's done. Focus on the positive. This is what this is about. It's not to negate the effort that we all can make as consumers and citizens of the earth. But I've never, ever been one for telling people what to do. This is me using my platform as a superhero to make you look at something and point towards the real superheroes who are the activists, the climate scientists, the engineers of change and the real hero at the center of it all, nature. This is a film about nature taking the lead, about us re-evaluating nature in an economic way, learning how to feed the future and learning how better to be a human and how to feel human within nature as a part of it rather than apart from it. So David Attenborough, when lockdown came to an end, he said when we were locked down, we were locked up, but nature bloomed, it blossomed. Right. And it really resonated with me and a lot of people watching that documentary. When people watch this, because there are some incredible people that have been a part of this, and I've spoken to some of them this evening. Amazing stories that will take you, you know, Chad and gosh, where else? I mean, London, obviously, Singapore, Bahamas, Ecuador. What one thing do you hope, starting with you, Johnny, do you hope that people don't miss? There's so much. What do you mean by don't miss? I don't know, sometimes you watch things and you think, yeah, but is there anything, the only thing you think, oh, please, I really want them to leave feeling something about this particular aspect, or is it the whole thing? Well, I mean, I think the top line message is let's work with nature, not against it, because that's just a North Star that we should always have. And if we make our decisions based on that, it's going to work out fine because, you know, nature's how the planet runs. So if we align ourselves with it, it'll work. You know, we've got Sam, Dan and this amazing lady here, Sai, and she and them are leading the three main arguments in the film of How to Live on Earth, which are split into chapters of, like I said, how to feed the future, how to value nature or revalue it as a commodity that's worth more alive than it is dead. Think of the illegal trade of elephants, ivory, right, decimation of elephant populations and what they do for nature. If we can make that more valuable than the ivory, as well as busting up the chains of illegal animal parts and trading that happens across the board, both in fashion, but also in terms of materials like ivory, then we can highlight that an elephant who roughs the ground up so that the grass into the savanna can grow and become an amazing carbon sink, keeps the waterways open, clears the bush to create an ecosystem where an amazing dazzling array of biodiversity survives and thrives. That, if we monetize it, is worth more to invest in than ivory ever will be.