Actor Sam Elliott drew widespread backlash after he criticized "Power of the Dog" for its "allusions of homosexuality" and now Benedict Cumberbatch is speaking out and explaining how the Netflix film helps fight toxic masculinity.
Although his comments were not geared directly towards Elliott, Cumberbatch, who plays closeted rancher Phil Burbank, defended "Power of the Dog," suggesting that it had far-reaching power.
"I think if we are to teach our sons to be feminists, if we're to teach equality, if we're to understand what poisons the well in men, [and] what creates toxic masculinity, we need to understand and look under the hood of characters like Phil Burbank to see what their struggle is and why that's there in the first place because otherwise it will just keep repeating itself," he said in a panel over the weekend that included Mariayah Kaderbhai, head of programs at BAFTA.
Last week Elliott went on a rant about the film during an interview on "WTF With Marc Maron," stating that it was not a true Western.
"You want to talk about that piece of s***?" Elliott said, "That's what all these f***ing cowboys in that movie looked like. They're all running around in chaps and no shirts, there's all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f***ing movie."
Cumberbatch, who said he had not heard the comments for himself, described them as "very odd." He appeared to take issue with the notion that "anybody could have anything other than a heteronormative existence because of what they do for a living or where they're born."
"I think the more we look under the hood of toxic masculinity and try to discover the root causes of it, the bigger the chance we have of dealing with it when it arises with our children in playgrounds at school, with their friends, in the behavioral patterns we might see in innocent play and just understand how to police that," he said.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.