Cate Blanchett is no stranger to play complicated, misunderstood women. But in Apple TV+'s “Liability exclusion”, Alfonso Cuaron's seven-part series about a documentary filmmaker, whose deepest, darkest secrets in a novel by an unreliable narrator, the two-time Academy winner, who has now been written three times EMMY candidate, was commissioned by a representative of a played woman who has losing her own history.
“The challenge for me and I assume that painful reality was that if you play a central character in a story, you don't necessarily invite an audience to have empathy with you, but you invite you to the point of view of your character,” says Blanchett from your home in London. “Exclusion” was the “antithesis” of this conventional wisdom, which forced blanchett, in the firm judgments of her character, Catherine Ravenscroft, to sit in others until they finally recapture their history in the shocking finale.
“As an actor and as a character, I was put in a very small box that slowly pushed out the air until I was finally allowed to speak,” explains Blanchett. “Alfonso has flawless judgment, but there was a conversation at a point where a specific scene would not be in the final processing. And I said:” I think it is really important that people hear this perspective because we asked them to enforce Catherine's silence.
At the height of the Covid 19 pandemic, Cuarón turned to Blanchett to work together at Renée Knights 2015 novel's adaptation, which he had read before making “Roma”. It would be expanded in seven episodes – or, as the filmmaker likes to put it, seven “chapters”. After Blanchett had registered as a star and executive producer, she was heavily involved in every step of production. But similar to the audience, the actor was confronted with her “own direct judgments of the motivations of the characters”.
“Alfonso was really busy that there is this war at the moment – and it actually feels like a fight – for a unique truth that I think is a really dangerous and rather senseless exercise because the truth is so complex,” says Blanchett. “We all know that it is made up of so many different perspectives, and those in which we base ourselves into are often the pre -dusted, pre -mastled, which are really easy to swallow, and somehow we feel the feeling that we are good people and the guards of all knowledge and morality. We don't like these truths that feel uncomfortable.”
Cate Blanchett as Catherine Ravenscroft in “Liability exclusion”
With the kind permission of Apple TV+
The audience specifically forces the viewers to face their own prejudices and the cultural defamation of so -called “poor” women. “I think when you go back and see it a second time, there is a coarse picture of Catherine that gathered people for themselves, who didn't have much to do with who she was or what she did in the room,” says Blanchett.
The truth was hidden in sight. In the first six episodes, the audience believed that Catherine had initiated a self-addicted affair with a 19-year-old stranger named Jonathan (Louis Partridge) years ago during the vacation in Italy, who ultimately died after he had saved Catherine's young son from drowning in the sea.
In the final, Catherine finally confronts Jonathan's father Stephen (Kevin Kline), whose late Ms. Nancy (Lesley Manville) had written the novel on the basis of a false perception of her son's last days. But what really happened was that Jonathan had broken into Catherine's hotel room the night before his death, forced her to pose for nude photos, and then sexually attacked her.
“I think to know that they have dragged on and that the often insoluble judgments of an audience about what had happened was a profound relief,” says Blanchett, who felt much easier after the outcome of the 40-page monologue, which had expanded in a take.
The devastating last turn was a secret that fought blanchett, even if the press made it almost impossible. “There are many tangential conversations that I would have loved, what happens, what happens when you sit with abuse and the different possibilities, how people bury this [trauma]”, She says.” The courage that still takes time to get up and say it, even after you have been in this shame, and the associated shame for people who are victims of abuse – I have the feeling that it would have been great to use the series as a launch pad in a way.
While she is most known for headlining films, Blanchett says that she is “trying” to continue to watch TV. In 2020 she received her first two Emmy nominations for FXS “Mrs. America” as an actor and producer. After she has always been actively involved in the development of a show, she is now “particularly sufficient” to join a series on the “complete form”.
Blanchett could get her wish sooner than later. Last year she shot a strictly secret cameo for the last scene of Netflix '”Squid Game”, in which she played an unnamed American recruiter that the front man (Lee Byung-Hun) recognizes and sees how Ddakji plays with a homeless with a homeless. The offer “came out of the blue”, and Blanchett received a small context.
“Because it is such a cult series and they shot in LA in all places, everyone had to be needed on the basis,” she recalls. She didn't even make a costume cladding; The production asked her to bring her own suit. “I have a few storyboards. I had to [learn to] Play the game very quickly. I had to practice and practice. I knew there were four or five setups they would do and I knew what they needed from every shot, and then I got the sides. But it was one of the more mysterious jobs. “
The surprise casting of a film star of Blanchett Kaliber indicates that Netflix is researching new ways to keep the IP alive. Does this mean that she is open to lead a potential English -language spinoff or a continuation of “Squid Game”?
“I am wild for everything,” says Blanchett and leans back into her chair with a grin. “And in a world that is so beautiful, so magically created. They are amazing world builders, and this series was eaten alive. I don't think there is a corner of the world that has touched it in any way.”
While speculation gave that David Fincher, Blanchett's “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Director, set up an English -language series in the “Squid Game” universe, Blanchett has no answer. “I mean, I would like to work with David again. It's eternal. But no, I don't know more than you. I'm not shy. I really don't.”
During her career, Blanchett insists that she was more and more interested in choosing her different employees than playing a certain way of character, and the “disclaimer” was no different. “I think that's why I played big and small characters in many different genres,” she says. “It is more access to different audiences where I am really interested because they catch an audience in a different rhythm when they are at home when they watch something, or if they are on the train when they watch something on a smaller screen or when they have come to the theater. In the end I am looking for this other connection with them.”