British comedian and actor Stephen Fry has joined the cast of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes sequel, promising to bring his Wildean wit and quintessentially English erudition to the role of Mycroft, Holmes’ older brother who is notably more intelligent but far less willing to engage in judo scrapes or explosions. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books, Mycroft is a skilled detective in his own right who occupies a mysterious top position in British government, but who’s hampered by his incredible laziness. The character description for Mycroft, the movie version, has him down as simply “an agoraphobic oddball”—which seems sort of reductive, but if nothing else, casting Fry guarantees that Mycroft will be dryly funny. And if not, well, at least Fry will probably write something pithy about it on Twitter.
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