Why Cate Blanchett has all the qualities for a world leader
Adored Australian actor Cate Blanchett, starring in an offbeat comedy about G7 global leaders, has got a lot to say about the state of the world – and always putting family first.
Entertainment
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Call her a chameleon if you like, but the imperious Cate Blanchett has done it all.
She’s played English queen Elizabeth I, won an Oscar for her Katharine Hepburn, been a scenery-chewing Russian baddie opposite Indiana Jones and an electric-era Bob Dylan. For her latest role, the Australian star is playing the German chancellor in surreal G7 comedy Rumours.
Weird isn’t the word for a film featuring a giant brain, exploding bog creatures and Charles Dance playing the US president with a British twang.
Blanchett glides through it all with her usual graceful ease.
Adopting a pitch-perfect Teutonic accent as Hilda Orlmann, the 55-year-old Melbourne native denies the character was based on Germany’s own real politician Angela Merkel.
“Everyone’s been asking this,” she says.
“I just think there’s so few examples of female leadership that, of course, we go, ‘It must be her’ because she’s the only one. I mean, you can put in one hand how many female leaders there are. No, it wasn’t based on her. But, of course, that’s going to be there simply because we both have breasts.”
The film begins as the leaders of the seven nations that make up the powerful G7 forum come together to deal with an unspecified crisis, only to find themselves stranded in a forest thick with fog and strange goings-on. Blanchett calls it a “heightened” movie.
“Even though the absurd nature of the world around us at the moment makes this film feel much more plausible than perhaps it would have 15 years ago. It’s very operatic, and it’s intensely surreal – a B-grade Mexican soap opera, as much as it is a meditation on contemporary leadership.”
She may be a feted two-time Oscar-winner, but Blanchett has always had an eye for the outlandish.
This year alone, she’s played a mother traumatised by her past in the Apple TV+ show Disclaimer and a renegade gun-for-hire in the video game adaptation Borderlands.
But nothing quite compares to Rumours, a film that is the brainchild of the offbeat Canadian Guy Maddin (The Saddest Music In The World) and his co-directors, siblings Evan and Galen Johnson.
“I mean, I’ve always admired Guy’s work,” says Blanchett.
“It’s like you don’t necessarily expect to get to work with everyone that you admire. And so when the opportunity comes up, you jump at it.
“I have four kids [with husband Andrew Upton].
“Sometimes those situations, those opportunities, have come up, and I just can’t go to that other country, or I just can’t take up that opportunity. And so when you can, then, yeah … I was super excited to.”
The film is a stark reminder of how difficult a game politics is, Blanchett adds.
“Jacinda Ardern [the former New Zealand prime minister] said this really interesting thing about the nature of contemporary leadership and the churn of the political process; you need to turn things out publicly constantly. You have very little time for reflection. And I think that’s where this film lives: in this contemplative space where they’re facing not only the end of the world, but they’re facing the end of their careers. They’re talking about regrets. And so all they do is reflect. It’s a big “Come to Jesus” moment, which is the opposite, I think, of contemporary politicians.”
Blanchett may never have taken to courting votes but she knows how to make a subtle political statement.
“We live in a political world where actors get asked their political views all the time,” she shrugs.
During Cannes, when Rumours premiered, Blanchett took to the red carpet for the Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice and wore a black Jean Paul Gaultier haute couture gown, designed by Haider Ackerman. Inside the dress was a green lining and a pale pink back, which many took to be her way of showing solidarity for the Palestinians under fire in Gaza. She had already signed Artists4Ceasefire’s open letter to Joe Biden, calling for a ceasefire.
Her outspoken nature doesn’t stop there. The film deals with the impending threat of AI, something that was key in last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike, when actors protested about their images being used wantonly by film studios.
“We’re a very inventive, resilient, practical industry that is very public-facing, oftentimes,” says Blanchett.
“That’s why I was so grateful that the strike really played out in a very big public way, because I felt like in the mainstream, a broad-reaching conversation about AI wasn’t happening before the strike.
“Our industry was really grappling with it. It really brought this thing to the forefront.”
So what are her thoughts?
It’s “tricky”, she admits, with the rise of artificial intelligence, whether it’s online banking or driverless vehicles.
“There’s no consultation in these things that are going to have huge ramifications in the future.”
Blanchett – who has all the qualities for a world leader – sighs.
“I think part of the problem is that we’re not responding instinctively. Where we over-intellectualise things that are simply wrong and need to be legislated. Those top 500 companies, make them pay their taxes!”
If she ever does stand for election, she’d get our vote, that’s for sure.
Rumours is in cinemas now
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