Cate Blanchett has made a strong case for award shows to stop being televised and go back to the policy of no phones, where “no one cared what anyone did”.
During an appearance on Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang’s Las Culturistas podcast, the two-time Oscar winner said that people were more “present” back when there were few to no chances of someone recording you.
“There’s so few spaces that you can go now, where you are private. That’s what I loved about the late ’80s, going to all of the dance parties in Sydney for Mardi Gras. People were just there. They were so present, you know, they were just together, collectively, having a great time,” the Black Bag star said.
“It was non-aggressive. No one was being recorded. No one cared what anyone did.”
The Academy Awards, which were first held in 1929, have been televised since the 25th ceremony in 1953.
The hosts went on to talk about the “treacherous” trend of lip readers on TikTok taking a video of two celebrities speaking to each other at an awards show and releasing their version of what they think was said.
“But now it feels like that chasm between that kind of event, that ideal, is widening from the thing that’s very common now at, like, an awards show where you’ve got lip readers, you’re being photographed,” Yang said .
Blanchett interjected: “Lip readers?”
“And it looks like it could be exactly what they’re saying, in a way that’s a little bit odd,” added Rogers.
Blanchett urged a return to non-televised award shows in favour of a “great party where people can just let go”, adding that people would find out which celebrity wore which outfit and won which award at the end anyway.
“I mean, I say, I know it’s blasphemy, go back to the day when it wasn’t televised. Bring that back and just have a great party where people can just let go. I mean, the industry is so scattered and at such a point of which I think potentially could be exciting or could really be depressing, but it’s at a pivot point, and so we need to gather together and celebrate what it is that we do, without it having to have any public-facing.
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“I mean, the fashion is great, and all of that stuff. We’ll find out in the end who won or who didn’t win. But it would be so nice that that happened behind closed doors. Absolutely a very different evening.”
Blanchett specified she wasn’t asking to get rid award shows, but for them to celebrate films in a way that doesn’t make one “sick” of them.
“It’s so great that people’s work is celebrated and in that way,” she said. “I think there’s a sense that, because this is the thing – all these films are amazing – so many amazing films and performances, and all of the craft awards, cinematography.
“You want to celebrate them, of course, but you can get sick of those films because they all get whittled down, as they must. I don’t want to get sick of any of those films because they’re brilliant.”
In 2023, after being named best actress in a drama at the Critics Choice Awards for her role in Tár, Blanchett called for an end to the “televised horse race” saying: “It’s like, what is this patriarchal pyramid where someone stands up here?”
“Why don’t we just say there’s a whole raft of female performances that are in concert and in dialogue with one another, and stop the televised horse race of it at all?
“Because can I tell you, every single woman – whether it’s television, film, advertising, tampon commercials, whatever – you’re all out there doing amazing work that is inspiring me continually.”
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Blanchett is currently on stage in London in The Barbican’s production of The Seagull, receiving rave reviews for her performance. In a four-star review, The Independent’s Alice Saville wrote: “Blanchett’s Arkadina is wonderfully, hilariously crass, blinding the front row with her glittery jeans then nonplussing the whole audience by tapdancing into splits. Yet underneath the performative silliness, Blanchett conveys a sense of a cavernous emptiness – a detachment from her own emotions that means she can only express herself in a hammy karaoke of borrowed lines.”
