Happy weekend, everyone!

Cate Blanchett is back in Los Angeles. Today is the annual banquet for Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) awardees then tomorrow is the Critics Choice Awards which will air on The CW, 19:00 EST. We have gathered interviews from the UK promo of TÁR. Check them below.

Salma Hayek and Cate Blanchett at the party hosted by Universal Pictures last night. Photo from Claude Budin-Juteau instagram.

Cate Blanchett at the party hosted by Universal Pictures last night. Click image for the source of the photo.

Nina Hoss, Cate, Donna Langley and Salma Hayek at the Universal Picture party. Photo by @lawlormedia

Cate and Donna Langley at the Universal Picture party. Photo by @lawlormedia

Cate Blanchett on Tár: ‘I don’t think there was ever a safety net with the whole thing’

If things are intense for the fictional Lydia, they must have been for the real-life Blanchett too. Several of the Australian star’s scenes (and she’s on screen nearly the entire time) are one-shot scenes, including a 10-minute sequence early on, when Lydia visits a class in Juilliard in New York City.

No doubt Blanchett’s extensive theatre work – she is a former artistic director, alongside her husband Andrew Upton, of the Sydney Theatre Company, and has tread the boards countless times – helped there. But Field himself said in an interview that his lead had ‘no safety net’ for these scenes.

The Journal caught up with Blanchett and Hoss for an interview this week. When we asked Blanchett if she felt that lack of a safety net herself, she laughed and told us:

“I don’t think there was ever a safety net with the whole thing; getting up in front of the Dresden Philharmonic and conducting those rehearsal scenes, I felt definitely in peril!” But she described it as “a dance you’re always dancing, with the camera crew, with the other actors in the scene, with the musicians in the scene, and with Todd.”

The 10-minute one-shot at Juilliard was rehearsed by Field and Blanchett a number of times before being filmed, and Blanchett described it as “much more akin to being on stage”. “We had these technical rehearsals, and then we had the performances, which were the takes, and we actually got it on the first take, it all came together,” she explained.

But their joy of nailing the take was short-lived, she revealed: And then the camera just… it slipped and went the wrong way. And so we had to [do it again], but it was thrilling.

Initially though, she had been worried about this scene. She told us this was because Lydia has a sensitivity to people’s body movements, and misophonia (sensitivity to sounds), which both play a specific role in how she behaves in Juilliard.

“I said to [the director], when he said he wanted to do it in one: there’s a really important component that I think you’ll lose if you do it in one,” of Lydia’s misophonia.

“This student has a bouncing knee, which is driving her crazy. And so I think [it influences] the way she’s speaking to him, but of course I said the audience is not going to get that… But because he’s the filmmaker that he is, I think you get that stuff homeopathically and perhaps if you’d cut into that scene, you wouldn’t – it would have made that stuff too front and centre.”

Indeed, that scene captures Lydia’s acute sensitivities and its impact on the students well, without drawing attention to the fact it is a one-shot wonder – quite the feat.

Full interview on The Journal

Click image to watch the interview.