Creator and director Alfonso Cuarón, Cate Blanchett, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Lesley Manville, Leila George, Louis Partridge, and Kevin Kline sit down to unpack central themes and narratives in DISCLAIMER*. In this edition, they warn against the dangers of implicit bias.
DISCLAIMER* is now streaming on Apple TV+ https://apple.co/_Disclaimer
DISCLAIMER* is a gripping psychological thriller in seven chapters, starring Academy Award winners Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline. Written and directed by five-time Academy Award winner Alfonso Cuarón, DISCLAIMER* is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Renée Knight. Acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchett) built her reputation revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others. When she receives a novel from an unknown author, she is horrified to realize she is now the main character in a story that exposes her darkest secrets.
As Catherine races to uncover the writer’s true identity, she is forced to confront her past before it destroys both her own life and her relationships with her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and their son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee). The ensemble cast includes Lesley Manville, Louis Partridge, Leila George, Hoyeon, and features Indira Varma as the narrator.
Hailing from Apple Studios, DISCLAIMER* is co-produced by Esperanto Filmoj and Anonymous Content. Cuarón executive produces for Esperanto Filmoj alongside Gabriela Rodriguez. In addition to starring, Blanchett serves as executive producer. David Levine and the late Steve Golin executive produce for Anonymous Content. Academy Award winner Emmanuel Lubezki, Donald Sabourin and Carlos Morales also executive produce. Renée Knight serves as co-executive producer. Lubezki and Academy Award nominee Bruno Delbonnel serve as directors of photography. The score is composed by multiple Academy and GRAMMY Award winner Finneas O’Connell.
DISCLAIMER* is now streaming on Apple TV+ https://apple.co/_Disclaimer
DISCLAIMER* is a gripping psychological thriller in seven chapters, starring Academy Award winners Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline. Written and directed by five-time Academy Award winner Alfonso Cuarón, DISCLAIMER* is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Renée Knight. Acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchett) built her reputation revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others. When she receives a novel from an unknown author, she is horrified to realize she is now the main character in a story that exposes her darkest secrets.
As Catherine races to uncover the writer’s true identity, she is forced to confront her past before it destroys both her own life and her relationships with her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and their son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee). The ensemble cast includes Lesley Manville, Louis Partridge, Leila George, Hoyeon, and features Indira Varma as the narrator.
Hailing from Apple Studios, DISCLAIMER* is co-produced by Esperanto Filmoj and Anonymous Content. Cuarón executive produces for Esperanto Filmoj alongside Gabriela Rodriguez. In addition to starring, Blanchett serves as executive producer. David Levine and the late Steve Golin executive produce for Anonymous Content. Academy Award winner Emmanuel Lubezki, Donald Sabourin and Carlos Morales also executive produce. Renée Knight serves as co-executive producer. Lubezki and Academy Award nominee Bruno Delbonnel serve as directors of photography. The score is composed by multiple Academy and GRAMMY Award winner Finneas O’Connell.
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TVTranscript
00:00The test I always said to myself was if they go back and watch it again,
00:04then they'll have a completely different perspective.
00:07Why didn't you question it?
00:13No, Mr. Ravenscroft, why didn't you?
00:19My character didn't know how to even process or explain
00:23to herself or to other people what had gone on all those years ago.
00:27It's important to know that the first six episodes we're going to hear everybody's voices.
00:31Yes.
00:32And now we're going to hear her voice.
00:34There's no one way, you know, there's signs, there's symptoms,
00:38there's certain ways of accessing the past that frequently occur with people
00:43who've gone through a traumatic experience.
00:45But there's no textbook to say this is the correct
00:48and accessible way to reveal that bit of information.
00:51Part of the challenge of Disclaimer, it was how not to reveal,
00:56but at the same time, how not to cheat by hiding information.
01:00Yes. No, I was reading a lot of books about people who had been sexually abused,
01:05people who have been physically or psychologically abused,
01:09and how that affects their memory of it.
01:13You remember these things in fragments.
01:16And that's why so often women's voices are not believed,
01:18because they seem to often contradict things they've said before,
01:23because memory doesn't work in a linear way.
01:25So you're watching her being reactivated,
01:27but yet we're expecting her to behave like a heroine.
01:30You know, and I think that's an enormous pressure to put on somebody
01:33who's been through what she's been through.
01:36It often takes people a really, really long time
01:38to even approach being able to talk about these things.
01:41Your wife couldn't fathom what I was feeling.
01:44Nancy.
01:44Shut up, I'm talking.
01:46I've heard enough from you.
01:47Finally, this is Catherine's point of view.
01:50The recollection is much more fragmentary,
01:53but she had to unpack it to understand her role within it
01:57and kind of eradicate that sense of shame.
02:01I mean, does that ever go away?
02:02I don't know.
02:07To make quick judgments is something that is ingrained in humanity
02:11for centuries and centuries.
02:13There is this encouragement of take a quick judgment.
02:17I mean, in social media, immediately you have the like or not like.
02:21A lot of these judgments come out of pure emotion
02:24without any stop to consider and contemplate for a moment.
02:30We're all looking for the truth, aren't we?
02:32Sometimes we think we've got a hold of it and nope.
02:36We were wrong about that.
02:38We're all subject to gullibility to varying degrees.
02:43I got halfway through and I kind of pushed the script away.
02:47I thought, I really don't like this woman.
02:50And of course, as the story unfolded, I found myself,
02:54I guess, being invited or forming judgments very quickly.
02:57Just struck me on the last episode,
02:59how susceptible we all are to stories and to ideas and beliefs and suggestions.
03:03It's quite shocking that moment.
03:05I had to kind of go and have a cup of tea and think,
03:08well, hang on, I've been working on an assumption
03:12that A and B equals C and they don't at all.
03:16How can you be so sure it was an accident?
03:18That's one of the overriding themes of the whole piece.
03:23Our inbuilt prejudice, our very uncomfortably easy ability to prejudge.
03:30Of course, within any story, we're never really not judging.
03:34And this kind of shows us the destructive nature of judgment.
03:39You don't deserve us.
03:42Now get out.
03:45If there is any lesson that I would take from it,
03:47it would be to give somebody the space to talk about something
03:50that might not be easy to talk about and to try and pick up on the signs.
03:54I don't think I've ever made something that step by step in performing it,
03:58I was acutely aware of where the audience might be at with the story.
04:03We wanted scenes coming out of the novel to have a heightened cinematic approach
04:10to frame that part of the story.
04:13The important part of it was about stating a big contrast between the novel
04:19with reality.
04:20It's radically different between one version and the other.
04:24You have in the book this seductive Catherine with this red swimming costume,
04:30while you have in the reality a more reserved Catherine with a one-piece swimming suit.
04:36You see in the hotel room, in the ceiling,
04:39you have this kind of erotic fresco of Greek gods,
04:43while in Catherine's memory is a reproduction of the dead of Saint Catherine.
04:48Kate and Alfonso really included me in the process of finding the differences
04:53between what we were calling fictional Catherine and real Catherine.
04:58It was a story of contrast.
04:59Jonathan, as we see him in the second half, he's a real ball of anger and hatred.
05:04I suppose if Jonathan number one is the deer in the headlights,
05:07Jonathan number two is a car coming at the deer.
05:10The test I always said to myself was, if they go back and watch it again,
05:14then they'll have a completely different view,
05:16or they'll be able to see maybe a very small,
05:19seemingly inconsequential gesture or moment or connection or avoidance,
05:25and then they might be confronted with the prejudice that they entered the story with,
05:30but not in a way that's manipulative.
05:34Oh, God.
05:35You think about it.
05:36One of the reasons she has a difficulty telling the truth to Stephen is out of compassion.
05:43The same reason she didn't tell the truth to Nancy.
05:46You know, it's because they already went through a trauma,
05:50and she doesn't want to make things more painful for them.
05:54You just have to know it's not easy.
05:56Mrs. Brigstocke, it's actually very, very complicated.
05:58Complicated?
05:59Complicated.
06:00No, no, no, no.
06:01No, it's not complicated.
06:02Oh, I'm dying.
06:06When you unearth these things, you re-experience them,
06:10and so the shock that you experience is as great as the moment in which it happened.
06:15And then when your nearest and dearest don't believe you,
06:19then that's almost another traumatic experience.
06:22I know I should forgive you, but the truth is I can't.
06:27Because you're managing the idea of me having been violated by someone
06:36far more easily than the idea that someone bringing me pleasure.
06:41Really at the center of this story is Nicholas,
06:44and what happens to the children of those people who've experienced trauma.
06:49What's painful about that is that they do deeply love one another.
06:52They just don't fully understand what has happened to them as a mother and a son.
06:56When he learns that his mother didn't do the terrible things that he thought,
07:00it's like another stage of grief.
07:02It's another stage of shame.
07:04But it's an overwhelming sense of love, and everything is okay.