A Strange Experience

Doubling Doctor Strange in the final Avengers movies

People think that’s a great Halloween costume, but actually, that’s me in a wardrobe tent at Pinewood Studios in Atlanta, dressed as Doctor Strange—wearing the exact costume Benedict Cumberbatch wears in the movies (after two and a half hours in hair and makeup). Pretty cool, considering this wasn’t even the job I was originally offered.

My agent called and said, “Sarah Finn’s casting office—the amazing team that casts all the Marvel movies—really likes you.” I had previously auditioned for Captain Marvel. My agent went on to say that the Russo Brothers had just called Sarah, needing an off-camera reader for Infinity War—someone to read opposite Robert Downey Jr. and a few other major stars in a couple of scenes. “It’s just a couple days of work in Atlanta. Could be fun! Would you be interested?”

Off-camera reader?! No, sir. I wanted to build a film career. And after landing a few nice roles in some great movies, this felt like a step backward.

Then my manager called to persuade me. She said, “Listen, one of the Avengers is my client. These are the biggest directors in the world. No one will ever know you did this. Just take the job. Meet the team. You never know what good might come of it.”

Little did any of us know that the New York Post would run a Page Six article with a sizable photo of me, calling me the “Cumbertwin.”

I agreed to take the job. About a month later, we got a call from one of the assistant directors: “We know Aaron’s not scheduled to come in for another week, but we’d like to fly him first class to Atlanta tomorrow to screen test—in full costume, hair, and makeup.” Turns out, I was likely going to do more than just read off-camera.

I’d been on big movies before, but never one this big. I remember meeting the costume designer who was hopping on a plane to London to try gloves on Benedict—and then flying right back. This production had money for 50 of the world’s biggest movie stars, so it certainly had money for an in-person glove fitting.

Everything fit me great. Everyone was happy with how I looked, and so the work began.

I started rehearsing with a tutting choreographer to learn all of Doctor Strange’s intricate hand movements and spell-casting gestures. These took weeks of rehearsal—but it was a ton of fun.

I headed into the stunt training area and saw Chris Pratt and Dave Bautista working out like beasts—both way bigger in person than I’d expected, and both super cool.

I ran into Tom Holland in the makeup trailer—this was just after he’d wrapped principal photography on the first Spider-Man movie and was doing a couple of reshoots.

I also met Benedict’s stunt double, who started teaching me some harness work, since the directors weren’t yet sure who was going to do what. Not a bad first week.

Day one of filming was actually day one of shooting for the entire Infinity War movie. It was the final scene on Thanos’s planet—where (spoiler alert) all the Avengers die. I was reporting back to Iron Man in an exchange with Robert Downey Jr. And yes, I was very intimidated. All these actors had been playing these roles for a decade. And since Marvel is famously top secret, none of the actors—except Downey—had seen the script before arriving on set that day.

So here I was, basically improvising as Doctor Strange with the biggest movie stars in the world, trying to help them do good work—fully knowing you’d never see my face as this character (creative camera angles, VFX, etc.).

Downey was awesome. The directors were incredibly kind. And though it was surreal being “the guy who’s not the guy,” it was insanely fun to step into Doctor Strange for a few scenes—both in that movie and in Endgame.

I learned so much about how films at that scale are made. I got to meet some of the biggest stars in the world…

And now here I am—living my own Doctor Strange journey: facing a life-changing medical crisis and going on a spiritual pilgrimage to heal myself.

My heart goes out to all the real-life superheroes.