Cate Blanchett sings, dances and scams
Actress plays self-help cult leader in “Stateless,” a Netflix miniseries she co-created.
Cate Blanchett in “Stateless” is the stuff memes are made of.
In the first episode of the Netflix miniseries (released July 8), the twotime Oscar winner is deliciously unsettling as a charismatic teacher named Pat, who runs a self-help cult out of a dance studio. Pat’s sinister streak is juxtaposed with cheery scenes of her teaching dance classes in Easter egg-colored tracksuits, and performing a cover of “Let’s Get Away From It All” in a sparkling ballgown.
“I was channeling Rosemary Clooney,” Blanchett says of the premiere’s lavish production number. “Pat was an incredibly fun and depressing character to play. I got to sing, I got to dance,” and through taking a supporting role, “help the series get made in any way I possibly could.”
The choice to start “Stateless” with some lighthearted camp is entirely deliberate. The six-episode drama, which Blanchett co-created with Elise McCredie and Tony Ayres, is primarily set in an immigration detention center and follows a white Australian woman named Sofie (Yvonne Strahovski, “The Handmaid’s Tale”) who is mistakenly detained Down Under after fleeing a cult.
Sofie’s initial ease at the detention center – where she poses as a German woman who demands to be deported “back home” – is in stark contrast to the inhumane treatment and life-or-death stakes of the hundreds of other detainees such as Ameer (Fayssal Bazzi), an Afghan refugee who was separated from his family after escaping the Taliban.
“We use Sofie’s story to give the audience a touchpoint into the series,” Ayres says. “There’s mystery, there’s intrigue, and there’s Cate Blanchett singing a song. What better way to get an audience to watch our show than through that? Hopefully, the idea is that we will then get an audience to invest in the other characters in the other parts of the story, which are in many ways refugee stories.”
Some TV critics have questioned the choice to make a show about refugees where three of the four main characters are white, particularly with renewed conversations about representation in
media happening this summer, following national anti-racism protests. (Aside from Strahovski, Jai Courtney and Asher Keddie play a guard and bureaucrat, respectively.)
Blanchett acknowledges the criticism but encourages viewers to watch “Stateless” all the way through. She points to Ameer’s daughter, Mina (Soraya Heidari), as “the beating heart of the story.”
“We’re in no way saying this is the only way to tell this story,” Blanchett says. “I look forward to many more refugee stories being told on television, film, or documentary. It is very much about trying to capture a wide audience because often the reality is that you start talking about refugees and asylum seekers and the global displacement crisis ... and (people) turn off because it’s too huge. So we wanted to create a sense of, ‘It could be me, it could be you,’ and so often, that is the white experience. But then you get inside the series, and there’s a multi-various array of characters.”
Blanchett, 51, has worked overseas as a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees since 2016, and says she hopes to capture the “profound resilience” of refugees in “Stateless.”
The show comes on the heels of another TV project for the actress, who also executive produced the FX miniseries “Mrs. America” this year. Blanchett portrays the real-life Phyllis Schlafly, an outspoken anti-feminist and conservative activist who opposed the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.
“Mrs. America” ends (spoiler!) with a long take of Phyllis dolefully peeling apples at her kitchen table, after being passed over for a position in Ronald Reagan’s cabinet and her husband asks for dinner.