Hello Blanchetters!

Cate Blanchett keeps promoting Mrs. America from her library. She appeared on Good Morning America yesterday morning. She also intervened in two podcasts. Enjoy!

Happy Sad Confused Podcast here

Still Watching Podcast here

New still from The LA Times (read the interview below). We have also replaced two more stills in HQ. Clear you cache to see them in full size.

Interviews

Cate Blanchett Asks Some Tough Questions About The Women’s Movement In ‘Mrs. America’

As an actor, Cate Blanchett is usually the one to provide answers about her projects. But, it seems she has a lot of questions as well.

During a press event for her upcoming limited series, Mrs. America, Blanchett, in an effort to get some information from creator, executive producer, showrunner and writer Dahvi Waller, and executive producer Stacey Sher, jumped in to say, “Can I ask a question? Sorry, I know I’m not a journalist in this instance, but Stacey, when you thought about the idea and you approached Dahvi, what was it that had inspired you to think you wanted to make this in the first place?”

The duo were happy to answer with Sher saying that it all started with a documentary she watched in the summer of 2016, just before that year’s Presidential election.

“We were watching all the coverage of the presidential campaign and some of it was pretty misogynistic in the way that it was pointed towards Hillary Clinton. We really at the time thought that we were going to have our first female president. So, I thought it would be interesting to re-explore how we got here from there. And I felt that telling the story from the point of view of its opposition would be fresher.”

Waller added, “I really wanted to work on something that centered on women. Because most political dramas are centered on men and women are either the wives or the victims.”

The pair used this motivation to create the narrative of Mrs. America, which tells the true story of the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, and the unexpected backlash led by the conservative Phyllis Schlafly, played by Blanchett.

Full interview on Forbes

How ‘the most liberated woman in America’ became TV’s next great antihero

“There’s no point in delving into this period unless it’s going to reveal something about where we are now,” says Blanchett, who is making her first appearance in an American television series with “Mrs. America.” “The reason for me to want to do this was to reverse-engineer how we got to a place where equality was such a political hot button and also reverse-engineer how we got to the backlash that we’re living in right now. And living through, I hope.”

Full interview on The LA Times

Cate Blanchett and Tracey Ullman Hail ‘Mrs. America’

“When Bryant got pied in the face, she started weeping,” Blanchett says. “When Phyllis got pied in the face, without missing a beat, she says, ‘Well, I’m glad that pie wasn’t cherry because it would’ve stained my dress.’ She said, ‘If you’re a doctor and you can’t stand the sight of blood, then you can’t be a doctor — and if you are frightened to controversy when you work in the political arena, you’re in the wrong field.’ She definitely relished the cut and thrust.”

Full interview on AARP

French interview for Le Point here

The New York Post

Reviews

AV Club

Only Cate Blanchett could sell the little faces Phyllis makes when no one’s looking—what she won’t say and can’t say. Her performance isn’t exactly eliciting sympathy; it’s just a masterwork in letting you read her mind without missing a beat. She has one of those moments in the beginning of the episode, during a fundraiser for Congressman Phil Crane. She walks on stage wearing a two-piece in honor of her husband, a major donor, to the cheering and jeering of the fellow donors. She walks on with a brilliant smile, but her face turns haunted as she walks back out.

Flicks New Zealand

In some ways it is a story we have seen many times before: power and ambition corrupting someone otherwise well-intentioned and unassuming. Yet, as Schlafly, Blanchett is more complicated than this. From her Stepford wife style, to her sly charm, to her subtle yet perfectly studied mannerisms, it is a predictably immaculate performance and one that never quite gives away Schlafly’s hand. Veering dangerously close to sympathetic one moment, the next she seems faintly monstrous—and in doing so toes the line between antihero and villain with the grace of Tony Soprano.

NPR

At the center is Blanchett’s deployment of her most patrician affect (which is saying something) to portray Schlafly as an ambitious woman eager to gather power, who originally tries to obtain it as a foreign policy commentator. Finding that door largely closed to her — in part because of sexism — she realizes that while they don’t want her opinions on foreign policy, she is very much welcomed by the male politicians in her circle when she is fighting and deriding other women. Feminists, specifically. Blanchett’s version of Schlafly adopts her antifeminist positions more because they are her path to power than because they are her greatest passion, although there’s plenty to indicate she believes in them at least enough to support their imposition on other women. (As other characters repeatedly point out, Schlafly herself is hardly living the life she advocates as the one most noble for women: Far from a housewife, she is essentially a professional full-time lobbyist.)

CNN Entertainment

The structure turns the narrative into an ensemble piece, but Blanchett is pretty astounding as Schlafly, including a televised debate she attempts to bluster her way through by making up a Supreme Court case, only to be called out on the lie. It’s a particularly bracing moment considering the prevalence of such tactics now, even in this age of ubiquitous fact checkers.

Vulture

Awards Daily

Kaaltv

If you are into costume desing, a nice article about the series is featured on Vanity Fair here and anther one on Vogue