Cumberbatch Feels Guilty Over His Fans, Plus Sherlock's Kiss with Moriarty

Deadline.com has some fun bits culled from the TCA press tour panel on Sherlock starring the extra scrummy Benedict Cumberbatch.

The third season opener for Sherlock saw it's biggest audience yet, with 4 million tuning in (compared with 3.2 million watching the season two premiere). But Cumberbatch won't say how many more three-episode seasons he'll commit to.

The show hangs on Cumberbatch: "Someone with him onstage noted BBC reportedly has said they'll continue making them until Cumberbatch gets too famous and refuses. 'Why is it always me,' Cumberbatch complained/simpered."

Cumberbatch on feelings about his growing legion of his fans: "The actor obliged, saying his reaction to the mob outside was one of 'guilt,' because he showed up so late he had to run past the fans who, he said, will have to 'wait another three-odd hours' before he can make his appearance. That said, he says he feels an enormous sense of responsibility to the fans who he described as 'by and large intelligent' and 'some of them normal.'"

What Cumberbatch really likes: "When actors he admires tell him 'You're fantastic!' like Harrison Ford did when they were both guests on Graham Norton's show. 'It was genuine, and a lovely thing to happen,' Cumberbatch said."

And what he doesn't like: "Cumberbatch prides himself on being somebody who still takes public transportation and does his own shopping, rather than 'sending out a minion'... It was when he went to get take-out chicken and the guy behind the counter went all fanboy on him, and it he didn't get his chicken for ages - 'that's the first moment I said "Oh... Christ, I do stuff people see."'" (Grammar nerds, count my quotation-within-quotation marks. I won't be ashamed if this needs correcting.)

But the most tantalizing moment of the season premiere was the near-kiss between Sherlock and Moriarty (played by Andrew Scott) in a scenario depicting how Sherlock might have survived a season two-ending fall from a building.

"We didn't actually kiss," Cumberbatch said at TCA. But executive producer Steven Moffat said, "We got the idea to do it from the palpable chemistry between Andrew and Benedict. We cut it right before the kiss. And the sex." Maybe it'll be in the DVD extras.

The new Sherlock episodes air after Downton Abbey on PBS.