Documentary Now! is a mockumentary television series, Cate Blanchett guest starred in two episodes: Waiting for the Artist (2019) and Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport (2022).

Season 3, Ep. 4 – Waiting for the Artist (2019)

Cate Blanchett as: Izabella Barta

Directors: Alex Buono and Rhys Thomas
Selected Cast: Fred Armisen, Helen Mirren
Written by: Seth Meyers
Airing date: 6 March 2019
Genre: Comedy

 

 

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Internationally acclaimed performance artist Izabella Barta is preparing for a major career retrospective in “Documentary Now! Waiting for the Artist,” with Cate Blanchett channeling Marina Abramovic. As she works to create a worthy centerpiece, Barta surprises both her critics and supporters by inviting her former lover and collaborator to the exhibit’s premiere.

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Behind the scenes; Later overviewRelated Videos

Quotes from Others

• Rhys Thomas:
  — On Cate Blanchett: “She provided some of her own costumes. She really met us on the plane of obsessive detail.”
  — “The way she threw herself into it was unforeseen. We knew she’d be good, but you don’t know until they walk up on set whether that they understanding the tone and the level of commitment, you know? But once she was on board, she was doing all this research. She had teeth made to shift her jawline. She had 15 wigs or something that she worked on with her longtime hair or makeup people. Her commitment to the detais matched our detail-oriented thinking.”
  — On the performance piece ‘A Stranger in Need’ in the series: “Then we said, ‘OK, we’re going to put a toilet stall right here.’ The Hungarians were just like, ‘Wait a minute, what do you mean a toilet stall? This is offensive that you would even suggest that.’ They wouldn’t budge. [They were able to obtain clearance to film the scene in the Budapest Opera House.]”
• Seth Meyers:
  — On Cate Blanchett: “I only heard she said yes (laughs). Really, three days after I said her name she said she was in. I had never met her and we sat down in New York for coffee one morning. I had heard she wanted to have coffee and so I went into it prepared to get her notes and hear what she wanted to do with it, but the only way to describe it was totally game. She had a take on how to play it, but she didn’t have any issues or suggestions for the script. Obviously if you watch it it’s like your dream for being a writer on it or for the directors of it, she just jumped in with both feet. It’s just a joy to watch. You think that there has to be this really protracted negotiation to get somebody like Cate Blanchett, but one of the things she told me was, “No one really asks me to do stuff like this.” And you realize sometimes you’ve just gotta take a risk and realize that somebody like Cate Blanchett’s just waiting for the day to go to Budapest and shoot for five days to make a fake documentary (laughs).”
  — On putting together Waiting for the Artist: “I really like The Artist Is Present, but there’s not really a narrative thrust other than just, “Here’s her career. Here’s the show.” And in the early drafts of it we felt it was lacking a narrative arc, because the reality is a lot of Abramovic’s art is pretty hilarious to begin with, so to do different versions of it felt a little one for one (laughs). We started watching other art documentaries and building out the character of Fred and sort of making that a character that, while you were paying attention to one thing, we managed to lay in that there was another thing happening, which is it wasn’t just a retrospective but it was also sort of a story about how even women who are incredible artists and you think have power, there’s always gonna be some guy who’s fucking it up for them (laughs). And again it was a perfect role for Fred to bring alive.”
• Fred Armisen:
  — On Cate Blanchett: “We weren’t prepared for how much work she was going to put into it! She showed up with her own wardrobe, with outfits that were like Marina’s. Cate even had some sort of dental things to make her look more like Marina. Sometimes I like to fancy myself the person who over-prepares and really gets into it—she was 10 times that. She could have done the whole episode on her own. The accent, the posture, oh man, it was incredible.”
  — On his favourite part of the episode: “I like the footage of Cate [Blanchett] putting the pail over her head with the marbles on the floor. It just made me laugh. It’s a silly part to it—I underestimate silliness.”

Trivia & Facts

• Filmed within four days in Budapest.
• The episode is a parody of Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (2012).
• For the scene with Izabella inside a washing machine, Cate Blanchett did her own stunts.
• While they were filming in Budapest, Manifesto (2015), the video installation by Julian Rosefeldt where Cate Blanchett plays 13 different characters was being exhibited in a museum according to Fred Armisen.

Related Article

Every Single Performance Piece From Waiting for the Artist with Cate Blanchett — you can read more on Bustle.

 

Season 4, Ep. 3 – Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport (2022)

Cate Blanchett as: Alice

Directors: Alex Buono and Rhys Thomas
Selected Cast: Harriet Walter, Fred Armisen, Helen Mirren
Written by: Seth Meyers
Airing date: 19 October 2022
Genre: Comedy

 

 

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Paying homage to documentaries 3 Salons at the Seaside and The September Issue, the episode is a fly-on-the-wall portrait of a hair salon owner, Edwina played by Harriet Walter, and her staff, Alice played by Cate Blanchett, in the small coastal village of Bagglyport as they prepare their yearly stylebook. Fred Armisen will also star as George the Postman.

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Still; Behind the scenesRelated Videos

Quotes from Others

• Rhys Thomas:
  — On Cate Blanchett’s voice in the episode: “Cate came up with the voice. She put an incredible amount of thought into everything. There are all sorts of wonderful details in her costume, courtesy of Rory Powers; her dry over worked hair courtesy of Kerry Warn; and even her irritated complexion thanks to all the shampooing and hair spray. Pay attention to her hands. She’s the best.”
• Seth Meyers:
  — On Cate Blanchett: “One of my favorite episodes this year (2022): Cate Blanchett did an episode for us in season three. We assumed Cate Blanchett is the kind of talent that just comes into your life briefly, blesses it, and moves on to her next thing. She actually enjoyed it so much that she brought this BBC documentary to us, which is an episode we did this year, called, “Three Salons by the Seaside.” It’s just this wonderful fly-on-the-wall documentary about hair salons in Blackpool, England. When you write an episode, you tend to watch the documentary 20 to 30 times. So if you ask me, “Are there any documentaries you watched lately?” There’s one I’ve watched so often that I feel like my wife knows it just from walking through the room.”

Trivia & Facts

• Filmed in Blackpool, England.
• The episode is a parody of Three Salons at the Seaside (1994).
• It was Cate Blanchett who pitched the idea to parody the documentary, Three Salons at the Seaside (1994), to the creative team.
• They filmed in the original salon from Three Salons at the Seaside (1994), the woman who used to run it was even on set.
• Cate Blanchett said she got to keep the photo book, where Alice is on the cover, from the episode.

 

Quotes by Cate Blanchett

• “I really loved doing “Waiting for the Artist” and this [Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport]. I’ve got a dear friend who’s a visual artist, Julian Rosefeldt. We did a thing called “Manifesto,” which we shot super fast, no rehearsal. We talked about things technically, but there’s no time to overthink anything and no time to really plan. You come in, and you muck around. [On ‘Documentary Now!’] it’s like one set is set up where someone’s doing something in the kitchen, quietly, while something else is being filmed in the main body at the salon. And you move between the set simultaneously, so there’s no preciousness at all.
  It’s almost like doing a silent movie. They’ll often talk through the take. And they’ll shoot, I’ll step behind the camera and say, “Oh, I see if I move a bit more to the left, it’ll be better.” It’s incredibly, incredibly fluid. […] It’s akin to a theatrical rehearsal room for me, or the Australian film industry, where if you’re an actor and you’re standing next to something that the gaffers can’t pick up, then you pick up and move the equipment. You are your own roadie on this one.” (Indiewire, May 2023)
• “I was on the set of “Mrs. America” and a dear friend of mine was doing my hair. I was playing Phyllis Schlafly, [so] it was like seven hours under the hair dryer to play that character, and we got talking about people’s relationship to their hairdresser. He said, “Oh, have you ever seen that little documentary [‘Three Salons at the Seaside’]?” I laughed and I cried — just that the day was filled that these women in a hairdressing salon talking about death. Death is, you know, it can be very funny.
  I had such a great time doing “Waiting for the Artist.” I’d spoken to Andrew [Singer] at Broadway Video, and he said, “Look, if you ever have any documentaries that you love, [let me know.]” So I sent it to Andrew and he loved it, and he showed it to Seth [Meyers] and I sent it to Alex [Buono] and Rhys [Thomas] and they loved it, too. We kept in sporadic contact, and I saw we were both filming in Budapest, and we caught up, just friendly. Then out of the blue, they said, “I have a script to send you.” I went, “Oh my God, I thought you guys had filed this away in the bottom of your sock drawer.” I was so surprised by it, and I went, “Yes, of course, let’s do it.””
• On the scene that stand out for her from the original documentary: “In our iteration of it, I really love the taking of the photographs. [Shooting this series is] so fast and furious. You never know what’s going to happen. You know those weird Japanese game shows of the ‘90s where people used to stand in front of the pyramids and put magnifying glasses to the nipples and see how long they can stand it? That’s the process of shooting these things.
  [So] the actual putting together of the photo book, it was a surprise to me. I took some of the pictures and then they took some of the pictures because it’s the way Alex and Rhys work. The making of that book and the unveiling of the book was particularly memorable.
  But in the original film, I loved the handbag. The idea that there are so many funerals and the owner of this particular salon didn’t want the women to go unprepared. So she kept a little funeral bag there and a list of when people had died because she didn’t want people to get the dates of the death wrong. And inside the funeral bag was a tissue and a mint. She’d really thought about it, this funeral bag.”