Benoit Blanc

> "*It's a dangerous thing to mistake speaking without thought for speaking the truth.*"
> ― Blanc to Birdie Jay[source]
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Detective **Benoit Blanc** is the main protagonist of Rian Johnson's *Knives Out* film series, appearing in *Knives Out* and its sequel *Glass Onion*. He is a private investigator who is often heralded as "the world's greatest detective". He is portrayed by Daniel Craig.

## Biography

### Early Years

Very little is known about Blanc's history. He comes from the southern United States, and his father worked as a detective, but has since retired.

### Career

Blanc has long been regarded as an incredibly famous detective due to the number of high-profile mysteries he has investigated. He's solved many cases in his life, including a case with a tennis champion involved (mentioned by Joni Thrombey) and the murder of a ballet dancer (mentioned by Claire Debella).

One day, an anonymous envelope was sent to Blanc's apartment. Inside of it was a stack of cash and a news clipping of Harlan Thrombey's death. This prompts him to ask the police and Trooper Wagner and Lieutenant Elliot to relaunch an investigation of Harlan's death, since Blanc realized that the envelope was sent from someone who thinks there was more to his death than suicide.

Later, in the film *Glass Onion*, Helen Brand approached Blanc about helping him solve who killed her twin sister, Andi Brand. Benoit agrees to help and goes to Miles Bron's private island to get to the bottom of it. He successfully figures out that Miles murdered Andi.

## Personality

Blanc is considered to be **"The Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths"** and in many ways he fits that title. He's flamboyant, practical, gentlemanly, somewhat eccentric, but incredibly clever, intelligent, and overall a good detective. Blanc also speaks like a member of the Southern aristocracy with an accent that has been described by Ransom Drysdale as a "Kentucky Fried Foghorn Leghorn Drawl". He has a tendency to use phrases and words that not many people understand, but also often employs the use of metaphors during his cases, such as likening the case of Harlan's death to "a donut" and his interest in the symbolism of the Glass Onion.

Blanc is at times sneaky, relentless, and snarky, but almost always in order to further progress during an investigation. He can also be very deceiving and manipulative, as shown by his ability to make both Miles Bron's "Disruptors" and the relatives of Harlan Thrombey lower their guards around him in order to get extra information.

He takes his job seriously and always wants justice to be served, striving for the truth above all else. He can appear bumbling on occasions but in no doubt has a brilliant mind, as he was able to tell right away that Marta Cabrera had something to do with Harlan's death. He nevertheless trusted her, to the point of enlisting her help in the investigation, as he approached the case more concerned with who anonymously hired him. He appears to have drawn some inspiration for his work from Harlan's books, telling Marta that his father, a detective, respected Harlan and his work.

He is also shown to be very kind. He appears to have a tendency of helping out the "underdogs", as shown by how he put his faith in Marta being a good person and working with her, and also by helping Helen with trying to find out who killed her twin sister. His kindness is also very clear when he tells Marta that she's a good nurse. He reassures others and is very caring, as shown when he calms a panicking Helen before she is almost shot, and when he very gently asks a weeping Whiskey to sit down elsewhere so that he can take care of Duke's body.

Blanc is also not without his faults; he admits to Helen that he is "very bad at dumb things", and calls it his Achilles' Heel. This includes games like Clue and Among Us, the former being called "a terrible, terrible game" by the detective, and the latter being a game he quickly loses and doesn't understand. He appears to have had a depressive episode during quarantine, as he would spend days not leaving the bathtub in his and Phillip's apartment, resulting in his partner and friends all worrying about him. He admitted to his friends that it's because his mind is "a fueled-up racing car" and that he had "nowhere to drive it", and that he tends to "lose it between cases". It can be assumed that the pandemic made Blanc struggle even further. He also gets extremely frustrated because of Miles, as he was expecting the murders he committed to be complex, but he realizes that they were exceedingly stupid. This, and him telling his friends over Zoom that he needs a challenge, shows that he prefers complex, difficult cases.

## Appearance

Blanc is middle-aged man with pale skin, short greying hair, and very distinct bright blue eyes. He has a very sharp taste in fashion, as in both movies he dresses well and appropriately for where he is.

In Knives Out, he wears the same mismatched suit every day with a charcoal hopsack wool jacket and warm grey trousers, along with various pale colored shirts, and a pair of dark suspenders. He also wears a pair of slim, rounded tortoiseshell glasses, as well as a matching pair with dark lenses. He has a collection of ties he wears throughout the film, all of which have a subtle floral pattern on them.

In Glass Onion, we first see Blanc in his bathtub wearing a dark navy velvet smoking cap with silver floral embroidery. When he meets Helen for the first time, he's changed into a thinly striped white and slate shirt and a purple floral tie, over it he dons a blue and red striped bathrobe with shawl lapels. In Greece, Blanc wears a wide array of summer outfits, affecting a brighter and more flamboyant style to match his surroundings. When talking to Helen the night before the boat trip, he has a lightweight knit jumper in eggshell with thin navy stripes, high-waist white linen trousers with a roomy fit and reverse box pleats, white loafers with brown piping, and a light-pink cotton neckerchief. In the morning, when meeting the rest of the gang, he dons a soft beige trilby hat, his usual sunglasses, a red and white polka-dot mask, high-waist pleated linen trousers in beige, and a powder-blue neckerchief tucked into a lightweight soft-pink button-up shirt with a large point collar. Later that day, when snooping around the isle and swimming in the pool, Blanc wears a faux button-down seersucker short-sleeve top and matching shorts with thick vertical blue and white stripes and a yellow neckerchief patterned with white flowers. For the rest of the day, he wears a light-blue button up shirt with a faint polka dot pattern, a pink ascot with a floral pattern, and a safari style suit in beige linen. In his final scene, he wears his beige trilby again. Upon meeting him, Birdie, an accomplished fashionista, fiddles with Blanc's shirt, asks what material it is and says that she loves it. Blanc states that he thinks it's cotton, as it is seemingly linen or linen blend, this comment is likely an example of his "southern hokum" which he uses to distract and cause people to underestimate him.

## Relationships

* Phillip Blanc (husband)
* Stephen Sondheim (friend)
* Angela Lansbury (friend)
* Natasha Lyonne (friend)
* Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (friend)
* Marta Cabrera (assistant in investigation, friend)
* Detective Lieutenant Elliott (colleague)
* Trooper Wagner (colleague)
* Helen Brand (assistant in investigation, friend)
* Miles Bron (temporary friend, turned enemy)
* Claire Debella (ally)
* Lionel Toussaint (ally)
* Birdie Jay (ally)
* Peg (ally)
* Whiskey (ally)
* Duke Cody (ally, deceased)

## Quotes

> "*My presence will be ornamental. You will find me a respectful, quiet, passive observer... of the truth.*"
> ― Blanc assuring Richard Drysdale that he won't meddle in the investigation.
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## Trivia

* Blanc's most defining trait is arguably his accent, derisively called a "Kentucky Fried Foghorn Leghorn Drawl" by Ransom. The screenplay for *Knives Out* called for "[...] the gentlest southern lilt you have ever heard in your life", but Daniel Craig elected to ignore this and go all out with his southern accent.
* At one point, Rian Johnson mulled having Blanc inexplicably speak in a different accent in each film.
	+ Daniel Craig worked with an accent coach for *Glass Onion*, as he was worried about performing a pastiche of the Southern accent he used in the first film.
* Similar to the character Columbo (of whom Rian Johnson is a professed fan), Blanc's overall demeanor and way of speaking is as much a character quirk as it is a tool, as Blanc often relies on the suspects' presumptions of his character to deceive them into revealing more information. He refers to this as "Southern hokum" in *Glass Onion*, using it in said film as a strategy to distract the various characters while he and Helen look for clues, and in *Knives Out* to lower Marta's guard about what he knows.
* Following the reveal of Blanc's partner Phillip in *Glass Onion*, Rian Johnson confirmed that Blanc is gay during the London Film Festival. According to Johnson, Blanc's sexuality had been in his mind since he wrote the original *Knives Out*, so that when the time came to write *Glass Onion* he felt it was natural to write a scene featuring Blanc's partner.
	+ When Birdie Jay attempts to flirt with Blanc, he appears uncomfortable and each time tries to move away from her.
* Rian Johnson has stated that he wants the movies to be focused on the mysteries and not on the detective, à la Agatha Christie detective characters such as Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. This is evident in both movies, where both Marta and Helen are the main focus, with Blanc simply aiding their respective causes.

## References

1. ↑ https://deadline.com/2023/01/hugh-grant-married-to-james-bond-glass-onion-knives-out-sequel-1235209672/
2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSLcTo\_2gwY
3. ↑ https://www.comicsands.com/knives-out-sequel-benoit-queer-2658464456.html
4. ↑ NY Times interview with Rian Johnson
5. ↑ https://screenrant.com/rian-johnson-no-knives-out-benoit-blanc-prequel-good/