Arriving in Toronto, Cate Blanchett gave a comprehensive lecture about creative tension on set, what makes big-budget movies “risky,” and why her six-time Oscar-nominated film “Carol” couldn’t secure financing. Fans waited in line early to get rush seats to see Blanchett, who is at TIFF promoting Guy Maddin’s feature “Rumours” and Alfonso Cuarón’s Apple TV+ series “Disclaimer,” with a standing ovation she was welcomed, as she arrived at the Royal Alexandra Theatre.
Speaking about her enjoyment of performing theatre in front of an audience live early in the interview, Blanchett addressed the “streamers out there” who withhold viewing data. “We want the numbers,” Blanchett said. “Not so we know how much money is being made, but we want to know how many eyeballs have been on things that we have made. That’s greatly important.”
When Blanchett was doing live theatre, she remembered hearing audience members exit the stage in the middle of a monologue, as if the seats in the auditorium were about to spring shut. “You look at the seats and you go, ‘OK, that was 70 pflumps.’ The next night, there’s 20 pflumps. And hopefully, by opening night,” Blanchett said.”And hopefully, by opening night, everyone is riveted,” Blanchett said, which caused the audience to chuckle.
Later in the discussion, Blanchett was questioned about how she resolves artistic differences with directors when they’re on location. Blanchett recounted an incident on the set of “Carol” when the director was having trouble with the lighting in a specific scene and the actors gave him space to think while they looked for other solutions, even though she claimed there has been “no conflict” with her longtime accomplice Todd Haynes.
“There is a misconception somehow that making the film, when it’s great, it’s like summer camp, and I’ve been on a couple of those, and the films have been fucking awful,” Blanchett said. “Polite disagreement, respectful disagreement is super important in the creative process.”
In the film “Carol,” Blanchett portrays a middle-aged mother who has a sexual relationship with a younger woman at a department shop. Despite the fact that the movie was released in 2015, Blanchett claimed that the process of making it took five years, with many directors, because obtaining funding for the project was “so hard.”
“At one point, another director was going to do it, and he got sort of taken off the project,” Blanchett said. That prompted her to step away as well, until Haynes expressed interest in the project and got Blanchett back on board. “It was a five-year period, because no one wanted to fund it at that point. No one wanted to see … who was going to watch a film with one woman, let alone two women, falling in love?”
She furthermore said, “We do think about how much still has to change within the industry in terms of equity, inclusion and making films more sustainably. But, you know, we have made huge advances.”