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Cate Blanchett skirted a question about a dress she wore on the Cannes Film Festival red carpet that some interpreted as a pro-Palestinian statement at a Venice Film Festival press conference on Thursday.
Though the actor never commented on it herself, many internet users took the dress she wore to the Cannes premiere of “The Apprentice” — with its black, white and green colors against the red carpet matching those of the Palestinian flag — as a political stance, with the New York Times even writing a piece questioning the dress’ meaning.
The dress was brought up during the Venice press conference for Blanchett and Alfonso Cuarón’s new series “Disclaimer” when a reporter asked if she was planning any red carpet surprises for Venice. In response, Blanchett simply joked: “I’m going naked.”
Elsewhere during the conference, Blanchett discussed the key themes of “Disclaimer,” including the idea of shame. Blanchett said she thought there was a “distinct lack of shame in society,” adding that shame was “very different” to guilt, which she didn’t think had much use. “But shame and regret and the lessons one can learn from that are very powerful.”
“Disclaimer,” a seven-episode psychological thriller series based on Renée Knight’s 2015 book of the same name, stars Blanchett as a famed documentary journalist who discovers she is the primary character in a novel that threatens to reveal her deepest, darkest secret.
When writing the script, Cuarón said “Cate was already there.”
Of moving from film to TV, Cuarón said that his one major miscalculation was that he didn’t realize the length of the production and treated each of the seven episodes like a film.
“So it was a very long process — I really felt for the actors, because they were stuck in their character for way too long,” he said. Added Blanchett: “We’re still recovering.”
All seven episodes of “Disclaimer” are set to screen out of competition at Venice Film Festival, and Blanchett and Cuarón will both be in attendance for the premiere of the first four episodes later today. The series also stars Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, HoYeon Jung, Louis Partridge, Lesley Manville and Leila George.
