Cate Blanchett is featured on The Wrap’s Emmy Magazine: Limited Series & TV Movie Issue June 2025 and the latest issue of Bold the Magazine. You can purchase your own copy of Bold the Magazine here.

BOZO OVER ROSES will screen at Revelation Perth International Film Festival as part of Experimental Showcase 2 lineup on 6 and 13 July, tickets are available here. Other screenings in Sydney and London here.

The Wrap Emmy Magazine

Massive spoilers on Disclaimer!

Gold Derby: How did you get yourself into character that quickly?
Leila George: When I arrived, they handed me a big binder, and I just got reading. We started shooting about 10 days from me knowing that I had the best job of my life. I often go into a bit of a panic before the first day. Have I done enough work? Do I even know what this character is? Luckily, with this job, Cate Blanchett, the queen, had already created this character. So I got to essentially just find pieces of what she’d already done and decide it was really mostly about finding the balance between how much to be like her and how much not to be.

GD: How were you able to access Cate’s portrayal? Did they show you what she had already filmed?
LG: When I first arrived, we did a block through in a studio of a couple of the scenes, and so I saw Cate’s idea of what those scenes would look like. I just watched her, and I could see some of the things that she was doing, some of the mannerisms that she had going on. And so I got to make some notes of that. And then we worked with the same dialect coach, and I think that was hugely helpful just for us to have the same sound. Beyond that, I was a bit panicked because I hadn’t seen anything, and it was our first day of shooting, and I’m in hair and makeup, and I know that I’m about to have to go outside and do my first shot, and and a PA knocks on my trailer door with an iPad. I had about 30 minutes to watch some scenes that she’d done, and I kind of knew I wasn’t ever going to see this iPad again. I thought about recording it, but then I thought, Apple’s going to know somehow that it’s on my iPhone. So I set it up on a table, and I put my phone facing me in selfie mode, and I videoed myself just mirroring everything she was doing, so that I had a physical image of what she was doing in scenes that I could then refer back to that was on my phone.

GD: What did you think when you saw the finished product?
LG: I don’t know if people know this, but when I was hired, it was just to be her body. They were going to face replace us. And about halfway through shooting, I remember Alfonso said, “I think we’d like to make it so that in the first four episodes, it’s actually you, and then when we cut to the truth, we’ll put Cate’s face on your body.” When we finished shooting, it was tough, because when we were shooting those last bedroom scenes that are really personal, and you’re just leaving all of you out there on film, I’d be driving home thinking it’s going be really hard to watch those scenes with someone else’s face on my body. I’m not sure I’m going be able to do that. I don’t think I’ll be able to see it. I was trying to just savor everything about it, knowing that was not mine anymore, that I was giving that away. And then about a year later, Alfonso let me go to a screening they had of an early cut and it was me. He called me after, and he said, “What do you think? Do you like it?” And I was like, “I’m so, so happy I got to see it before you did all of the CGI. Thank you for letting me see that.” And he was like, “Yeah, we’re not gonna do it. We’re just gonna let it be you.” I just bawled my eyes out. I couldn’t believe it, and I felt so, so honored that that they would decide to do that.

Full interview on Gold Derby

Bold the Magazine

Source: The Wrap