most successful actors. she's won notjust one but two academy awards. brought up originally in australia, she's returned to her roots for her latest film, the new boy, which she's also produced. it's the story of a young boy from an indigenous background who's kidnapped and then forced to live in a catholic orphanage. cate blanchett, welcome to the arts interview. thank you. so i wanted to begin byjust getting you to explain the whole idea of new boy. well, it's a film by warwick thornton, who's one of australia's great directors. he's a cinematographer, he's a writer, and this is a film that's intensely personal that he's sort of wrote 20 years ago from personal experience, and then it's been extrapolated out from there. but in a nutshell, it's set on a remote monastery in the 1940s, so the backdrop is the second world war. and the monastery is being presided over by a nun, who i play, who's officiating mass, the priest is dead. and one night, unceremoniously, a young indigenous boy is dumped on the doorstep of the monastery to be cared for as part of the reprehensible government policy of assimilation of indigenous children, in order to separate indigenous children from their culture. and this powerful spirituality of this young boy destabilises the surety of the catholic faith there, and these strange miracles start to happen. which we see so vividly in the performance by this little boy, by aswan reid, just nine years old, and you can't take your eyes off him when he's on—screen. he's absolutely magnetic. erm, i mean, we were so lucky to find him. i remember warwick... warwick thornton and i started to have these conversations over the pandemic, as a lot of people did, you know, and he was talking about this story, and he said, "but of course we don't have a film "unless we find the new boy." and we found this young boy, who was a chiricahua boy from the border of the northern territory and western australia, who'd not only never been off country, he'd never been on a film set, but yet he is... he was the most... he learned more in two days about the film industry than i'd learnt in almost 30 years. he's extraordinary. and he's just won an award. he has. he won... basically the australian academy awards, he won best actor, and was so well deserved. i mean, often, when an award like that's given to a child, you sort of think, "0oh, you know, is that "a right thing to do?" sentimentality or... yes, but he... the demands that were placed on him as an actor, for any actor, no matter what their age and experience, but yet a young boy who had just turned 11, who had never been on a film set, and he had to get up at dawn... but what was so moving was the other boys, because, of course, there's a whole... it's like an orphanage, so the boys that rallied around him and who would also get up with him at dawn to be there for him and make him a cup of tea if he had to be there at sunset. but his... the rigour and the discipline, and the focus that he had, as well as this incredible spirit that warwick brought to life and helped him enhance on—screen. this is warwick thornton, the director, and you said this was partially based on his own experience? yes, i knew warwick's work, and people may have seen sweet country, or his first feature, samson and delilah, which won the camera d'0r at cannes. and of course, for this film, he won the golden frog at camerimage, which is the biggest cinematography prize in the world. but, you know, his work is often quite savage and brutal, but this is a... it's a very personal story about his own experience, which i didn't know. he was taken off country, sent away by his mother to be disciplined and educated by benedictine nuns and monks. and i didn't realise that. so i had been obsessed myself with the church, the catholic church, not being a catholic at all, but my father died young and i was hoping, you know, in some way, that i would find some sense of comfort through the rituals of churchgoing. and so we found this connection. and i... and so he's wrote from his own experience about going on 20 years ago now. and i think he put that... it was so personal, he put it in his sock drawer, his proverbial sock drawer, and left it there. and then we began talking over the pandemic and realising that we had this sort of crossover interest. he said, you know, "sis, would you be interested "in reading this story?" and i said, "absolutely." but when he gave it to me and my husband, andrew, you know, who, we produce together, he... it was a story about a monk and a young indigenous boy, and my husband suggested that he flip it into a nun. so that's. . . how the conversation evolved. but it was from personal experience. and that's so interesting, the way that it struck a chord with you, because of your experience, as you've just been saying, because of your father dying. mmm. and tell me more about that. why... what was it about the church at that time in your life that meant something to you, do you think? i mean, i think that often cataclysmic things that happen to children, as you see in the new boy, cataclysmic things that happened to this young boy... ..children sort of assimilate it in a way that they don't fully understand on a cognitive level when they're older. but i think i was looking for, when i look at it now, i was looking for some sense of understanding of what i had perceived as the disappearance of my father, which seemed some inverse miracle, you know, that...how could he be there one day and gone the next? and there was something comforting about the community and the rituals in the church, and...the secrets and the guilt, and all of the subtext that was in, you know, the rituals of the catholic church. so i wasn't at all raised catholic, or at all religious, and i was, i think, in a very simplistic way hoping that the hand of god would come down and tell me, you know, "your father's playing golf. "he'll be..." you know, "you'll see him in a few years�* time." but of course that didn't happen, and so what happened then is i then just thought... i grew up sort of...where the suburbs meet the country, and so ijust went on my bike, and i went into nature down by the yarra river and... and so i think, warwick and i, our conversation led from organised religion and the borderland of where your connection to country is, where that intersects and how, often with organised religion, there's an incuriosity about sort of more pagan or indigenous spirituality. but yet, often, indigenous cultures are intensely curious about organised religion. and so that's sort of... it was an unexpected connection that we both had. and that's very much what we see through the eyes of the new boy... mmm. ..of aswan, because he is intrigued by the catholic church. he is intrigued by the statue of christ on the cross, which... seeing it through his eyes, you realise actually what a violent image it is... incredibly violent. ..with the crown of thorns and the nails through the hands and the stigmata. but you also see very... i mean, he's such an extraordinary cinematographer. you also see very early on the new boy trying to connect with this new country that he's been landed into, hugging a tree, like, trying to find connection through the wood of the tree. and then he sees this tortured wooden christ, thinking this tree has given birth to this tortured face and body with nails in it. so he's trying to find a connection to that piece of wood and what that wood is trying to tell him. you know, and i think one of the remarkable things for me about the script, which then became the film that warwick made, is that the central protagonist is largely silent. so these images take on a great resonance, and of course the score that warren ellis and nick cave bequeathed us, gave us, was so... you know, it became the soulful partner to the images that warwick creates. and i'm interested as well in the climate of the times, there's a subtlety in the film that it's... there's no real abuse of the child... no. ..there isn't really violence, but it's about the clash of cultures and actually, in the end, the extinction of his culture. and this was government policy in a sense, wasn't it, in that period? absolutely. i mean, i don't think... you look at what's being unearthed in canada, you know, and what has continually been unearthed in australia, there was a really damaging, brutal policy of the eradication of indigenous culture. and certainly when... even when i was at school, we were taught of dreamtime stories, but sort of in a way that one would be told disney fables. we weren't really invited into or told the stories by the people themselves, who they'd been passed onto. and i think it's to our... ..you know, to our detriment, that, you know, we've not... we've not been able to really adhere to the deep—time vibrant history that came before white settlement. and i think that this is something that warwick has been wrestling with, i think, in bringing this film to life. and it's been a fascinating journey and a privilege to be part of, both as an actor and as a producer, that when we screened this at cannes, which of course is in france, a colonising country, when we've been to canada, which was a colonised country, and obviously screened it in australia and then going to italy, and, you know, now to england, another colonising country, just to see the reactions, and through all those... different resonances in different countries. yes, has been really fascinating, because of course this is an australian story, but the resonances that it has, i think, are much more sort of archetypical and fable—like. and it's still very much a live issue in australia, isn't it, the whole issue of rights for indigenous people? there was a referendum... mmm. ..which you campaigned on, and which you lost, which must have been very disappointing for you. your side lost. yes, i mean, i wouldn't even say that i campaigned on it. i think because it was... it was a very... it was an opportunity not only to finally recognise... ..the voice of one of the largest... ..oldest continuing cultures in human history, and to place that into the constitution so that it doesn't become a political football, not only did we fail to recognise that, it, i think, was a massive opportunity to... ..to look at the complexity of australian history, and to move forward as a modern democracy. and that opportunity was unfortunately passed up, and there is a lot of grief around that, and a lot of reckoning. i mean, back in 2008, when my husband, andrew upton, and i moved back to australia to take over the sydney theatre company, there was a sorry saying ceremony in parliament, and we all wept when we thought, "this is a moment where we can "finally move forward," because, of course, unexamined trauma, even if it's not from your own personal culture, but when you are living through it side—by—side, when it's unexamined, it gets replicated in some way. it gets passed down, and i think that that's a... it's a missed opportunity. itwas a... so many positives could have come out of it, and now we have to... we have to look at the failure of picking up that opportunity. so...here we are. i was wondering, listening to you talk about australia in this way, how important is your australian identity to you? because you've lived in this country for many years. yes, it's... look, as a white middle—class australian woman who's had, you know, incredible opportunities, i have a very particular perspective, don't it? and i've had the luxury of travel and exposure to many cultures, and... but you never really leave australia. and i don't know whether you feel that way? are you... were you born and bred here? i was born in ireland and left when i was very young, but i certainly still feel a pull to ireland... mmm. ..it�*s definitely part of my identity. yes. but i've lived here and in other countries as well. yes, and i think that those... those stories that your grandmothers, your grandfathers, tell you about where they came from, they do become part of your... ..your dreamscape, or how you imagine yourself, but i have a very strong pull to the australian landscape. and i think it's no surprise that some of the world's great cinematographers and film—makers have come out of australia, warwick being... warwick thornton being one of them. well, the landscape in new boy, i mean, it'sjust... it's a character in and of itself. ..so beautiful. yes. just watching the waves going through the fields of wheat. and the sound that the wheat fields make. i mean, it literally took me four or five days to work out what this buzz noise was. i thought...| thought it might have been cicadas, or crickets, or some insect equivalent, but it was simply the noise of the sheaves of wheat moving against one another, this incredible buzz. and there are noises and shapes and shadows and light plays that happen in australia that have etched themselves into my... ..into my soul — i don't want to sound too highfalutin about it — in ways that i can't even articulate. so i'm constantly pulled back. ithink... you know, i remember speaking to the late, great clive james about this, is that you constantly reference australia, even when you're, you know, you've lived many decades elsewhere. it's a very, very powerful and magnetic place, because of, you know, indigenous culture. i also wanted to ask you about your own performance, because you... 0h! can we talk about something else? no, it's really... i mean, you've taken a lot of risks with it as someone who's known for being obviously a very good actress, but a very beautiful woman, but in this film, you play a nun, i don't think you've got any make—up on, and as one film reviewer says, "you've gone the full wimple." "the full wimple!" i have... and i'm not alone here, i mean, think about the silhouette of nuns in cinema history. it's a very alluring, provocative silhouette, and i don't mean that in any sexualway, i'm... ijust mean it visually. you're always thinking about, psychologically as well as physically, what's underneath. and so with heather wallace, who designed the costumes, you think, "well, that's an easyjob. "there's a couple of nuns and a couple of farm workers "and a few boys," but she worked long and hard with warwick to work out... it wasn't from any particular order of nuns, he just wanted to have a... ..a wimple and a serre—tete that meant that the nun would have to turn her face to look at whoever she was speaking to. he was interested in how the light would play over the face. and so the... it was a lot of kind of almost invisible design that went into that, to work out how then warwick would shoot the faces of, you know, both a white and a black nun. and was there any kind of adjustment for you in doing this? did you feel it was a risk or did you think, "no, this isjust... "this is just necessary for the part"? well, let me tell you, there was a lot of make—up on there. cate laughs you're very honest. this is the way i normally look! you know... look, ifound it fascinating, you know, that there's... 0riginally, this script was written for a... it was called father and son, so it was written for a priest and a young indigenous boy. and we all said, you know, "who would want to see that "movie and what more could we say about that?" if we flip the gender, then suddenly we have a dead priest, we have a nun who's officiating mass, and we have people who are all dislocated from their, you know, their kind of metaphysical country, you know, and their set of belief. and so i found it absolutely intriguing to go into the exploration of what it would mean to be a nun in those particular set of circumstances. and... and getting dressed every day was a real ritual with heather and i. and, you know, just little things about... you know, i'd read that buddhist nuns sometimes wrap their legs in bandages so that they don't catch any insects on their body and... and so i knew that warwick would be shooting under the table, and i thought that there would be a lot of interplay if that bandage became unravelled. they're just little tiny symbolic things that you can play with. even though you only have the one costume, it's how you wear that costume. i find it really fascinating. and is that a very important part of things when you're preparing for a role? it is, because i think the more you work in this visual medium, you realise that before you even blink an eye, utter a word, an audience will start to read character and meaning into what you look like. and there's real opportunity... ..to signal to an audience, and to invite them into a psychological world of a character, and that means that you can then pair back what you say or what you do. and so my relationship with costume designers has been a really fruitful, interesting one, even when you're literallyjust wearing the same costume. and do you think there's been a kind of shift in attitudes towards the way that actors, in particular women, the way that they look? is there a sort of greater range now of what audiences expect? erm... she exhales sharply ..i don't know. imean, i'm... i mean, it's always, ithink, an actor'sjob to... surprise is the most wonderful thing, i think. and my husband and i were just talking about this the other day — we love surprises. i think a lot of people do. i think when you get what you expect, it's always slightly disappointing, even if it's wonderful. and you've obviously got a great sense of fun, because i'm thinking about not so long ago, i think it must have been an awards thing for margot robbie as barbie, and you came in wearing... oh, yes, right! ..the most... yes. i mean, look at you, you're very stylish today, but you were wearing this huge pink... that was very stylish. it's in my wardrobe. really? yeah. we'll retract that, just you wait. look, and i... it was like a pink meringue, wasn't it, with a huge bow? tinsel meringue, yeah. i know. yeah, i'm going to wear it to my 60th — which is some, some years away! many decades off. yeah, decades. decades off. i don't know. but, look, i think the industry has changed...enormously. enormously. and i think women collectively have made that elbow room. and i remember starting out, and i came late to the film industry, i was working in the theatre and never really... i mean, the australian industry is incredibly powerful and punches above its weight. you know, it's a very cliched phrase, but it does — you know, given australia's population size internationally. but i never expected to make a film and was very happy working in the theatre. and so when i was cast in a film when i was... ..i think i was 2a, 25 — which in dog years at that time for an actress was close to 70 — i was told i'd probably have five good years. and so i thought, "well"... somebody actually said that to you? yes! my husband! they laugh no, in a really supportive way, he said, "look, "you know, when you're... "if you're lucky, you might get a decade, so do what you love. "do what interests you, don't worry about getting anywhere." and i thought, "yeah, absolutely." and so i took... i was offered bigger parts, but i took smaller parts cos i found them... i thought, "that's going to stretch me more." and... and i suppose... ..just incremental step by incremental step, you suddenly find yourself having what's called a career. but that was not something that i ever expected to have at that point, whereas i think, now, women are able to... i think there's more women writing, there are far more women who are producing, in both large and small ways. and you're producing, of course. new boy is produced by your production company... yes. ..the one which, as you said, you run with your husband. and is that... how's that working partnership? is he as honest in work as he was about your longevity as an actor? yes. i mean, we were doing it in a small way before we ran the sydney theatre company, but we so enjoyed that decade of producing work for the stage. and, actually, kip williams — who took the job after us — has got the wonderful show from the sydney theatre company on in the west end now, the picture of dorian grey, with sarah snook, so... oh, yes. ..that�*s from the same... from succession. yes. from the same company, which is extraordinary. so we... it was really an extension of the work we did through the theatre company there, and we've... i think it's a testament, i suppose, to our marriage, really, that, you know, we're good life partners, but also balance one another out creatively, from a producorial point of view. so in the partnership with your husband, how do you decide on which projects you're going to put forward or not? we've got very eclectic taste. i mean, i think we did have when we ran the sydney theatre company, you know, doing 19 shows a year, supporting emerging artists as well as established artists, and with a desire to tour internationally. so whilst the shows were given birth to, so to speak, in australia, we were interested in their... to see where they connect universally, outside your own culture. and i know first—hand from touring shows — like gross und klein, which is a german play, or streetcar, which liv ullmann directed — that, as you tour, the works accrue meaning. and so, for example, with new boy, moving through all these different festivals, the work... we like to provide the film—makers that we work with the space to accrue meaning to the film. because sometimes, a film emerges fully—formed, and sometimes, it takes a while to emerge, like the new boy. so, i think you have to... ..to have it say, "this is the sort of work we do. "this is the way we work." i think you're not really alive to the needs of the film—maker, or to the responses of the audience. not that you're allowing the audience to tell you what the film is, but you allow the work to grow through the exposure to an audience. so... and do you think it means that... i mean, obviously, you're taken very seriously as an actor, but do you think it gives you more power, more control, the fact that you're a producer, too? i'm not interested in power or control, to be honest. i'm interested in the conversation. and i think that often that, you know, if you've been relatively successful or impactful in one particular section of an industry, then that's the box you're expected to stay in. and i think it always surprises me when people say to an actor, "so, "did you have any impact on how the script unfolded, "or what your costume was, or how that was shot?" and you think, "well, what do you think myjob is?" it's a collaborative medium. and it depends... you know, if you think about the way ingmar bergman worked, he would give actors gestures, you know, but he wouldn't give them a lot of necessarily spoken direction. through that gesture, he would know, eventually, that would unlock the psychology of the character. so, you have to be alive to the way that every director works. and some directors are more absolute than other directors. and some directors are much more fluid. but to me, it's about being part of that conversation and saying, well, you know, as an actor, you're always at the table. and as a producer, you canjust say, well, you have a certain standing in the industry, so if i can help find the money, the space for something be heard and seen, like the new boy, or like christos nikou's fingernails or... this is the new film that you're producing, which has jeremy allen white and jessie buckley. yes, and riz ahmed, yes. we were very lucky with the cast. yes, very lucky. and what are you yourself most looking forward to in the coming months? what am i looking forward to? i'm always saying i want to get back into the garden. you know, ifeel it's... i love the australian landscape, but i wouldn't necessarily go into long grass and have a picnic there. i'm looking forward... you wouldn't know what's in that long grass, would you? no, exactly, exactly! but, you know, i am looking forward to harvesting the carrots when they finally come up. simple things. but i'm about to... i just finished a film withjimjarmusch, and i'm about to work with steven soderbergh, who i haven't worked with for quite some time. so, it's always great to work with directors again. but, yes, and then there's a couple of things that we have on the boil at dirty films. so... well, thank you so much for telling us about your latest project, the new boy. cate blanchett, many thanks. thanks. hello. we've had some sunshine. not a bad day overall. just a few showers here and there. i think easter sunday is going to be a little more overcast, particularly across england and closer to the north sea coast. quite a chilly breeze off the north sea with some drizzle at times. now, the satellite picture shows that gap in the weather that's over us right now, so things set fair for the moment. but this thicker cloud towards the east will shroud the uk during the course of sunday, particularly eastern areas of the uk. now, through the course of tonight, yes, there's a bit of rain in the forecast for some southwestern areas, perhaps just around the irish sea and into northern ireland. but the bulk of the uk should have predominantly clear and dry weather. chilly in the north of scotland, a touch of frost and some mist and fog forming, particularly across central parts of england. so the morning is looking bright for many of us, particularly across the north and the west of the uk. a few showers there in northern ireland, but then this thick cloud invades off the north sea, a chilly breeze, fleeting rain possible from parts of the southeast through east anglia, lincolnshire and really all along that north sea coast. the best of the sunshine will be out towards the west tomorrow around the irish sea, southwestern scotland, northern ireland, the western isles. and then sunday night into monday, a weather front moves in from the south. this is going to be more substantial rain, a more prolonged spell of rain to come for many of us on easter monday. really not looking particularly pretty across england and wales. your best bet for fine weather is the north of northern ireland, also northern and western scotland away from that weather front, temperatures around nine degrees in aberdeen. but in the south, despite the cloud and the rain still getting up to 14, though, i don't think it's particularly going to feel like it. and then the outlook for the week ahead will see a series of low pressures aligning themselves up in the atlantic. heading our way, one weatherfront after the other, after the other. and that basically spells rain. so whether you're checking the website or looking at the app an indication here with these rain symbols that the weather is going to be predominantly unsettled. rain at times, certainly possible almost anywhere in the uk. and before i go, there'sjust a quick message that british summertime begins tonight. bye— bye. live from london, this is bbc news. the un warns the targeting of its peacekeepers is unacceptable — after three observers were injured by an explosion in southern lebanon. a warning that a year of civil war in sudan has left millions of people facing imminentfamine. political leaders promise stability in northern ireland won't be affected by the arrest and resignation of the dup leader. and an oar—some win for cambridge — beating oxford in the boat race, one of the world's most famous amateur sporting events. hello, i'm lauren taylor. the un peacekeeping mission in lebanon — unifil — says three of its observers and a translator were injured by an explosion near the israeli border. it said the peacekeepers were on a foot patrol when the blast happened — they've been taken to hospital. the un said it was investigating the cause of the explosion, and warned the targeting of observers was "unacceptable." israel has denied any involvement. also, there are reports from the us that the biden adminstration has