Filling in the Blanc
COUNT YOUR LUCKY stars that you weren’t hanging around the Empire office late last year. Because, for a couple of weeks in the run-up to Christmas, Benoit Blanc was everywhere. Every conversation, every bit of throwaway badinage had a Blanc reference or quote in there somewhere. And you couldn’t move for impressions; bad take-offs of Daniel Craig drawling, “I suspect foul play,” or “I have eliminated no suspects,” or, most fun of all to say, “I am a passive observer of the truth.”
All of which echoed the rest of the world’s reaction to the master detective created by Rian Johnson for his wonderful whodunnit, Knives Out. Johnson made no bones, from the off, about his desire to create a cinematic case-cracker to rival Poirot, and in the shape of Craig’s eccentric, Sondheim-loving, brilliant private eye, who solves the murder of a successful New England-based mystery writer, he succeeded so spectacularly that he’s already hard at work on a sequel. And when we sat down with Johnson recently, we decided to become passive observers of the truth behind Benoit Blanc…
People have wholeheartedly taken to Benoit Blanc. Has that taken you by surprise?
