Benedict Cumberbatch responds to Sam Elliott's 'very odd' criticism of 'The Power of the Dog'

• Benedict Cumberbatch responded to Sam Elliott's criticism of "The Power of the Dog."
• Elliott criticized the film's "allusions of homosexuality" on Marc Maron's "WTF" podcast last week.

Benedict Cumberbatch on Friday responded to Sam Elliott's criticism of "The Power of the Dog."

Elliott, a veteran Western actor, appeared on Marc Maron's "WTF" podcast last week and described Jane Campion's Oscar-nominated movie as a "piece of shit."

He compared the cowboy characters, played by Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee, among others, to Chippendales dancers who "wear bow ties and not much else."

"That's what all these fucking cowboys in that movie looked like," he said. "They're running around in chaps and no shirts. There's all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the movie."

Elliott described Campion, who's from New Zealand, as a "brilliant director" but criticized her knowledge of the source material. "What the fuck does this woman from down there know about the American West?" he said.

During a BAFTA event on Friday, Cumberbatch alluded to Elliott's criticism. "I'm trying very hard not to say anything about a very odd reaction that happened the other day on a radio podcast over here," he said.

"Without meaning to sort of stir over the ashes of that ... someone really took offense to — I haven't heard it, so it's unfair, really, for me to comment in detail on it — but really took offense to the West being portrayed in this way."

Referring to his character in the movie, Phil Burbank, an emotionally repressed gay man, Cumberbatch added, "These people still exist in our world.

"Whether it's on our doorstep or whether it's down the road or whether it's someone we meet in a bar or a pub or, I don't know, on the sports field, there is aggression and anger and frustration and an inability to control or know who you are in that moment that causes damage to that person and, as we know far more openly now, as I was saying, damage to others around them."

He said there was "no harm" in "looking at a character to try and get to the root causes of that."

"This is a very specific case of repression, but also due to an intolerance, a societal intolerance, for that true identity that Phil is, that Phil has, that he can't fully be," he said.