In her recent interview, Cate Blanchett shares her views on the ongoing Women’s Rights movement in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein, and her upcoming role at the Cannes Film Festival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqKwYOxt2Qc
Cate Blanchett is no stranger to the Cannes Film Festival; after all, she has been visiting it over the past two decades in different capacities. Still, the significance of the role which she is going to play at 2018’s Cannes Film Festival – President of the Jury – isn’t lost on her.
For, in the multi-decade long history of the film festival, it will only be the 12th time that a woman will fill that seat. Worse, in the seven-decade-long history of the festival, Jane Campion remains the only woman to have received the prestigious Palme d’Or award for ‘’The Piano’’.
In addition to these two events, there’s another incident which Blanchett recalls which showed her in black and white terms the glaring gender gap in the industry.
Back in 2014, all the previous winners of Palme d’Or were invited to the 50th-anniversary ceremony of the film festival. Guess what, there was only one woman winner, Jane Campion, surrounding by an all-male crowd of previous award winners.
Blanchet, after pointing our attention to that event, recalls what she said after she had seen it for the first time: ‘’There’s something wrong’’.
Differentiating today’s struggle for women for equality in the Hollywood from those of previous times, Blanchett points out one major difference.
“This conversation has been had by so many individual women in isolated places for decades. What is different now is the collective, cross-industry nature of this movement.” She says in an interview to Variety.
Blanchett, 48, criticizes the shocking pay inequities of the Industry which has only seen the light of the day in the past few years. She says that just like her fellow actresses – Michelle Williams, Jennifer Lawrence, and Claire Foy among them – she has also not been given the same pay as the one given to her male colleagues.
Blanchett: I was harassed by Harvey Weinstein
Cate Blanchett says Harvey Weinstein acted inappropriately toward her: 'He really primarily preyed, like most predators, on the vulnerable'. pic.twitter.com/9DxIsE63UY
— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) May 2, 2018
For the first time in his life, Blanchett reveals that just like many other women in the Hollywood, she too was sexually harassed by Harvey Weinstein. When the interviewer asked her whether she’d support Dylan Farrow’s case against Woody Allen on allegations of sexual abuse, Blanchett says she’d fully support the case if it was reopened.
For an Australian who now lives in London, Blanchett says she has passions outside of acting as well. For instance, during the days she was being interviewed by Variety, Blanchett, who the UN High Commissioner for Refugees named as its goodwill ambassador in 2016, visited the refugee camps in Bangladesh.
She also went to Jordan and Lebanon to meet the stateless people and refugees whose lives have been ravaged by the 7-year long Syrian conflict.
Finally, in the closing stages of her interview, Blanchett is asked by the interviewer about her role as an editor in the Cannes Film Festival. She describes it as an ‘’enormous responsibility’’, and that she ‘’can’t wait for the conversation’’ surrounding the movies which the panel would be viewing to select the winner.
