‘Watson’: Robert Carlyle on His Interpretation of Sherlock Holmes (Exclusive)

Robert Carlyle is officially Sherlock Holmes on Watson, and he chatted with PopCulture.com about his interpretation.

The Once Upon a Time actor made his debut as the fictional detective at the end of the Season 2 premiere of the CBS medical drama.

 In Monday’s new episode, “Back from the Dead,” premiering at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, “When a microbiology university researcher returns from an expedition to Siberia, she and her team members fall ill from a possible revived pathogen or ‘zombie virus.’ Meanwhile, Watson catches up with his friend Sherlock Holmes after finding out he is alive, and Ingrid unexpectedly finds herself on the team’s floor.”

Carlyle has some pretty big shoes to fill, as many other actors have taken up the Sherlock mantle over the years. Sherlock Holmes is a pretty big and beloved character, regardless. He shared that when the part came in, he started thinking “way, way back,” mentioning Basil Rathbone, who played the detective in a series of 14 films between 1939 and 1946, as well as a radio series. Carlyle noted that while that Sherlock had the pipe, cape, and everything, he thought it was a “little ridiculous.”

He went on to say that there was no similarity between that and what he was going to do, realizing there was really no similarity between any of the previous Sherlocks. “It’s something entirely new,” Carlyle stated. “So it’s not like I’m out there playing Sherlock Holmes like everybody else has played Sherlock Holmes. It’s more of an interpretation of Craig Sweeny, our creator, and our writer’s interpretation of the man. And it was something not to be afraid of, but to be enjoyed. And it’s too good, I think, to turn down, to get a chance to do it.”

“But there’s something about this Sherlock,” he continued. “I think what makes this Sherlock different from the others is I think this one has a sense of his own mortality quite deeply. He talks about that quite a lot. It’s quite a few moments that he speaks about that. And also, I mean, I understand this because of the age of the arm. You get to a certain age in life and you begin to look back and you think, ‘Well, what’s it all been for? What have I achieved?’ And Sherlock’s exactly the same. He thinks that he could solve crimes until the day he dies. But what has that been for? What’s he actually left behind?”

Carlyle teased that in a future episode, Sherlock will be talking about the expression, “Sherlock Holmes was here,” eventually saying, “But the older I get, the more I wanna shout that into the void.” Carlyle admitted he loves that. “So I think that’s gonna hint at the kind of Sherlock that he is,” he continued. “There’s a theatricality to Sherlock, no doubt, certainly, and this one too. But that, hopefully, as it goes on, what I’m trying to do myself is just sort of break that down and begin to find the man that’s underneath that. It is not all about the fancy, posh voice.”

Meanwhile, when it comes to exploring his version of Sherlock Holmes, Robert Carlyle said it all comes from the scripts and you “can only do what’s put in front of you.” He shared, “I suppose it’s really just to kinda have that relationship with Watson and trying to show through, but not showing it is that these two have a deep, deep relationship with each other, just by many, many, many years. I think it’s interesting that the first time you actually see him, and he appears in Episode 1, he’s inside Watson’s fridge looking for horseradish. This is like two college students stealing each other’s food. So I like that, and I think as it progresses, you see that there’s some fun they have with each other. I think Watson has fun with Sherlock in the way that you can’t really have with the rest of the doctors. He’s got that unspoken friendship.”

Considering Sherlock was thought to be dead and now he’s back, it should be interesting to see how things go between him and Watson and what this means. It also sounds like Carlyle’s interpretation of the beloved detective will be an entertaining one, and fans won’t want to miss a single second. New episodes of Watson air on Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, streaming the next day on Paramount+.