Warwick Thornton says Cate Blanchett “elbowed” her way into ‘The New Boy’
Director Warwick Thornton has said that Cate Blanchett “elbowed” her way into his new feature, The New Boy, which debuted at Cannes Film Festival this week.
Thornton commented on the matter as he introduced the movie at Deadline’s Cannes Studio before its premiere. In the film, Blanchett plays the mysterious nun, Sister Eileen, who runs an orphanage for lost boys. However, the role was initially written as a priest for a male actor until Blanchett changed that. “The character of sister Eileen wasn’t in the script at that time, but Cate coming along actually made it beautiful,” Thornton explained.
Blanchett told the publication that she contacted Thornton during the pandemic, with the pair starting a virtual workshop to discuss the opportunities they could create together. “Like a lot of people during the pandemic, I thought, well, look, who do I really want to be a dialogue with?” she said. “So we just started to Zoom. And then it evolved from there.”
“I wrote it when I was much younger, and a lot more naive about cinema and storytelling. It came from a place of anger,” Thornton said elsewhere. “That was probably the wrong place to actually write from. So me maturing got it to a beautiful place.”
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