The TV show Cate Blanchett was banned from starring in: “Those are the rules”
Most sane directors would do whatever it takes to get Cate Blanchett in their movie. She is, without question, one of the greatest actors of her generation, and even the most illustrious of auteurs would be lucky to have her in their film. Blanchett has proved time and again that she can do just about anything. An egomaniacal conductor? Sure thing. An elf? No question. Bob Dylan? Absolutely. She is a chameleon who can do any accent, gender, and era as if she was born to do it.
The idea that a filmmaker would actually turn her down is slightly disconcerting. It would be like Joni Mitchell offering to write you a breakup song only to have you say, “Nah, I’m good.” Blanchett makes even bad movies look good. Consider Woody Allen’s remake of A Streetcar Named Desire, Blue Jasmine. It’s a trifling melodrama that she turned into a vehicle for an Oscar-winning performance. She almost even made that Borderlands movie bearable.
She’s worked with some of the greatest directors working today, including Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Alejandro G Iñárritu, Steven Soderbergh, Todd Haynes, David Fincher, and Steven Spielberg. So, who would be so self-defeating as to turn her down? The answer is Taika Waititi.
In 2019, the New Zealand director revealed that Blanchett had been interested in playing a vampire on the television series What We Do in the Shadows but that he had turned her down because she hadn’t played a vampire before. They had compiled a list of potential actors and somehow, she had gotten on it despite not fitting the strict criteria.
“I think maybe people got confused,” he said. “I was like, ‘Cate, have you ever played a vampire?’ She was like, ‘No, but I’d love to.’ I was like, ‘But you haven’t?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well then you can’t be in the show.’” And that was that. When she insisted that she really wanted to be in the show, he simply said, “Those are the rules.”
Instead, the episode featured guest actors Evan Rachel Wood, Tilda Swinton, Paul Reubens, Wesley Snipes, and Danny Trejo, all of whom had previously played vampires. Blanchett has already played a dragon, an elf, and a Marvel villain (in a Taika Waititi film, no less). Surely, they could have made an exception. However, it seems that the rules were strictly enforced, no matter the level of street cred that potential stars brought with them.
Blanchett shouldn’t feel bad about it, though. Ultimately, she had it much better than Brad Pitt, whose representatives had personally reached out to the What We Do in the Shadows gang to offer his services. Unlike Blanchett, he had already played a vampire. In 1994, he was one of the members of an up-and-coming cast in the cult classic Interview with a Vampire, playing Louis de Pointe du Lac.
Despite these stellar credentials, he didn’t make it onto What We Do in the Shadows either. “We never really followed up,” executive producer Paul Simms said of the letter from Pitt’s representatives trying to get him a spot on the show. “Which is kind of rude of us, and maybe a mistake.”
