'Sherlock' star Martin Freeman and his wife Amanda Abbington have received death threats.
Martin Freeman and wife Amanda Abbington
The 43-year-old actor and Amanda - who also plays his spouse in the BBC drama - contacted police after an obsessive female fan wrote a series of comments online that called for the couples' funerals and showed a weapon to be used in their murder.
A picture of a customised barbed wire baseball bat was captioned: "Shall we start prepping for a possible funeral?"
Whilst another fan wrote: "Dude that's intense, but i would so use these".
Benedict Cumberbatch - who plays Sherlock Holmes - was named in an apparent explanation of why the couple should be killed.
The fan wrote: "Both Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington are starting to give Benedict and all his fans a bad name! They seriously just need to shut up and f***ing die already!"
Martin, 43, has children, Joe, nine and seven-year-old-Grace, with Amanda.
The actress, 41, received similar death threats last year but this time she took to Twitter to post screen shots of the threats and spoke directly to the perpetrator.
She penned: "To the coward who's since shut this blog down. We've already informed the police sweetie. They have all the info."
A source close to the couple - who married in 2000 - said the pair are aware of Benedict's obsessive female fans who are known as "Cumberb*****s".
The insider told The Sun newspaper: "These messages were incredibly sinister and they are well aware of the obsessive nature of a certain number of Benedict fans.
"Hopefully whoever is behind this will be caught and prosecuted."
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