How Ari Aster convinced Cate Blanchett to embrace absurdity: “It was unturndownable”
Cate Blanchett has played pretty much every type of character there is. In Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, she was an immortal elf. In Carol, she portrayed an older divorcee intertwined in a taboo love affair with a much younger woman. She’s played gangsters, famous actresses, Russian spies, English Queens, and even a puppet monkey in Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinnochio. If you can think of something, chances are Blanchett has been it.
One of the Australian’s most intriguing recent roles came in Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s film Rumours. She plays Hilda Ortmann, the Chancellor of Germany attending the G7 summit with other powerful world leaders. Unfortunately, they get lost in a nearby forest, where they are attacked by mysterious creatures as they attempt to return to civilization. It’s an absolutely bonkers idea with an even more bonkers execution, but it’s a whole lot of fun.
Speaking with Screen Rant, Blanchett gave her reasons for signing on to this insane project. “I’m a huge fan of Guy’s ouvre,” she revealed. “I had seen all his films and I particularly loved The Green Fog, which he’d made with Evan and Galen Johnson. And then I found out that Ari Aster was producing. That’s how it came to me and how it came to you.”
Blanchett said that, upon reading the script for Rumours, she burst out laughing. “I think all good scripts have the sense that they have to be filmed to make sense,” she continued. “And so, the chance to work with them and with an international cast, it was unturndownable. I knew it was funny. It was awkward. And the way they assemble their films is so unique in particular. So I wanted to be part of that.”
Aster, director of Midsommar, Hereditary, and Beau is Afraid, served as an executive producer on Rumours. His films follow a similar vein; formidably frightening with elements of the sublime woven in. His most recent picture, Beau is Afraid, leans furthest into the absurd, combining existential dread and personal anxiety with outlandish scenarios and visuals. It’s easy to see why he was keen to help Maddin and the Johnsons out and why Blanchett was so eager to work with him.
The movie, which also stars Charles Dance as the US President, Denis Ménochet as the President of France, and Alicia Vikander as Secretary General of the European Commission, received praise for its handling of what could have been a simple one-note joke and for its satirical portrayal of powerful politicians as frightened children.
Ménochet, who was also interviewed by Screen Rant, is a friend of Aster’s, having worked with him on Beau is Afraid. “Reading the script, I thought it was so wicked, hilarious,” the French actor revealed. “And playing the French president was nice, like, ‘Yeah, I can be the French president and just lean into all those cliches and have fun with it.'” He called signing on to the movie, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, a “no-brainer.”
“It’s this sort of awkward cross between a Mexican soap opera and an episode of Scooby-Doo and a zombie chase movie,” Blanchett said, highlighting the absolute chaos of the film. Ménochet then compared the movie to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, rounding off the oddest collection of comparisons in film promotion history.
