The role Cate Blanchett was waiting on for her entire career: “I’ve got to come clean”
Few actors are more accomplished than Cate Blanchett, but that doesn’t mean she’s curbed her ambitions. After nearly three decades in the industry and two Academy Awards on her shelf, Blanchett has continued to swerve in unexpected directions.
Having won both the ‘Best Actress’ and ‘Best Supporting Actress’ prizes at the Oscars, she’s also headlined massive blockbusters like Thor: Ragnarok, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the underrated Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, taken to prestige television with Mrs America, popped up at the end of Squid Game, and even played Bob Dylan, seemingly able to dominate every field she’s in.
Someone who has achieved so much at a relatively young age could be compelled to slip back into familiar territory, but Blanchett has chosen to pursue projects that interest her, regardless of what commercial prospects they may have, remarking to Dazed that she had a very specific reason for joining the cast of The New Boy, which she also produced.
“I’ve got to come clean: I’ve always wanted to play a nun,” she said, “They’re such mysterious figures, particularly cloistered nuns. I’m fascinated by the concealment”.
The New Boy is an independent drama from Blanchett’s home country of Australia, and centres on a small Aboriginal boy (played by newcomer Aswan Reid) who is raised and supported by a monastery of nuns after being found lost in the outback desert. Although The New Boy has religious themes and may have been targeted at a Christian audience, it’s a far more stylised and unique work of art than the typical faith-based dramas that American production companies seem to release on a regular basis.
Considering what a massive filmography Blanchett has, it’s somewhat surprising that she has never played a nun before. While she played a teacher (albeit a duplicitous one) in Notes on a Scandal, and there are certainly some religious themes in The Lord of the Rings, her role in The New Boy shows that she is still willing to do the unexpected.
In addition to The New Boy, the actor took on supporting roles in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and the musical The School for Good and Evil, even though she was seemingly overqualified for those parts.
Although she was widely mocked for appearing in Borderlands, the disastrous video game adaptation directed by Eli Roth, she silenced any doubters when she gave another towering, all-time great performance in Tár (which would have won her a third Oscar in a more just world).
It remains to be seen if The New Boy will end up being a particularly memorable film, especially given how busy Blanchett tends to be, as she is just coming off another great year of being in Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag and Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother. However, the fact that she was able to grant a smaller project with her involvement means that it is likely to receive a much more significant audience than it would have otherwise.
