A novel idea: Apple TV+'s 'Disclaimer' blends dark secrets, intrigue and an ensemble cast

Alfonso Cuarón knows a thing or two about being at the helm of a project.

The Oscar winner’s latest project, “Disclaimer,” is currently streaming on Apple TV+.

The series is based on the novel of the same name by Renée Knight.

A novel idea: Apple TV+'s 'Disclaimer' blends dark secrets, intrigue and an ensemble cast

“Disclaimer” brings together an ensemble cast including Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lesley Manville, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Louis Partridge, Leila George and Hoyeon, and features Indira Varma as the narrator.

Cuarón is the sole director of the seven-chapter series, which airs a new episode each Friday through Nov. 8.

For this project, he wanted the entire creative team to ensure that the subject matter was always handled with sensitivity.

He also didn’t realize that he was going to direct all seven episodes.

“But once I finished the script, I could not let it go,” Cuarón admits.

With directing, he only had one actress in mind to be at the center of the drama.

“From the get-go, I immediately thought of Cate Blanchett,” says Cuarón. “The first thing I did when it was done was send it to her. I was terrified that she would say no because I’d invested so much writing thinking of a specific person.”

The series tells the story of acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft, played by Blanchett, who has 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 and threatens to destroy her family.

As Ravenscroft races to uncover the writer’s true identity, she is forced to confront her past before it destroys her life and her relationships with her husband Robert, played by Baron Cohen and son Nicholas, played by Smit-McPhee.

Though Blanchett had met Cuarón in passing, the pair had never collaborated on a project together.

“The idea of working with Alfonso was really enticing,” says Blanchett, who also is an executive producer on the series. “So when I knew Alfonso wanted to speak, it was one of those situations where I’d already made the decision that I was going to do it. So I thought, ‘Well, I hope I enjoy the script, because I’m already there.’”

Blanchett says while reading the script, there was a visceral sensation she had only experienced once before, while reading David Mamet’s “Oleanna.”

“I pushed the script away and thought, ‘I really don’t like this woman. I don’t know how to get in there.’ And then I thought, ‘No, it’s Alfonso, keep reading.’ I like to think I’m a very open and relatively non-judgmental person, that I don’t need to like a character, and I don’t form judgments,” Blanchett says. “But as the story unfolded, I was very confronted as I found myself quickly forming judgments. I thought it would be a fascinating journey to be on, to tell a tale from so many points of view, but also to play a character who is such an enigma and who exists more in people’s judgments than she does in her own right. I thought that would be an amazing challenge.”

After reading and processing the seven chapters of the story, Blanchett says she came back to Cuarón with “a thousand questions,” something that excited the writer-director and led to a further evolution of the scripts.

“It was great when Cate got involved,” recalls Cuarón. “Right away, she came with the right questions. It was sometimes little things and sometimes broader things, just trying to make sure that everything made sense. But most importantly, trying to make sure we were never cheating the audience. When I wrote, I had included certain plot manipulations. Cate recognized from the start that these weren’t working. She would say, ‘This is against what we’re trying to do.’ Much of our discussion then focused on character motivation, because changing one character’s motivation can have ripple effects throughout the story.”

Two storylines are told in the present.

The first revolves around Catherine and her affluent family — her husband, Robert, a cultured, intelligent man who runs an organization that serves as an umbrella of nongovernmental organizations; and their son, Nicholas, who has recently moved out of home and has a somewhat contentious relationship with his mother.

Baron Cohen has been selective when choosing projects outside his own over the course of his career. In fact, over the past 25 years, he has appeared in only five feature films — notably, all by Oscar-winning directors.

“Being able to collaborate with some of the best directors in the world allows me to stretch myself and grow as an actor,” Baron Cohen says. “Alfonso and I have talked about collaborating since 2004 and we’ve been friends for many years. He’s created some of the greatest works of cinema. And Cate Blanchett is one of the greatest living actors, so it was inspirational to see her process and work together throughout production, especially during some very emotionally complex scenes. So it was the opportunity to work with Alfonso, Cate and the incredible cast, along with the riveting story, that made it an easy decision to join the project.”

The second storyline follows Stephen Brigstocke, a widowed, retired teacher portrayed by Kline.

“When you meet Stephen for the first time, he’s a man who is already tired of life, and he has lost his reason to keep moving forward,” Cuarón says. “He was forcefully retired from teaching recently and now he finds himself alone in the emptiness of the nest where his wife, Nancy (played by Manville) and son, Jonathan (played by Partridge), used to live with him.

“Stephen looks at the past with a certain amount of romanticization. He’s very attached to it, and in many ways, he blames circumstances for his sadness, for his despair. When he discovers this book written by Nancy before she died — ‘The Perfect Stranger’ — he gets a new interpretation of what happened in the past that gives him some force of life. All his misfortune is represented in Catherine Ravenscroft. He forges a plan to seek revenge. But the ultimate revenge is not only to make her suffer, it is to make her experience the same pain that he has been feeling for the last 20 years.”

Kline, who makes his TV series debut with “Disclaimer,” found numerous reasons to be drawn to the project.

“I was very taken with the surprising and suspenseful script that Alfonso wrote, and as I read it the role of Stephen seemed unlike anything I’d played before,” shares Kline. “The process of making the series was utterly unique, due primarily to Alfonso’s directing style. I had never before witnessed such a degree of meticulous attention-to-detail and masterful control of every element of the production. And I don’t like gushing, but I was — and am — a great fan of all the actors I had the privilege of working with.”

The third storyline plays out in the past and is predominantly expressed in the form of the novel Stephen sends to Catherine that seems to document events that transpired over 20 years ago that paint Catherine — played in the 2001 timeline by Leila George — in an entirely different light from the way she is perceived by her family and colleagues. What happened during this trip to Italy is something Catherine has long tried to forget. Although Robert reassures her that he would never judge her no matter what the book says, those words soon ring hollow when scandalous photographs from that vacation find their way into his possession, leaving Robert to question who he is really married to. His reaction reveals the cracks that have formed in the couple’s marriage, unearthing Robert’s repressed feelings of resentfulness and jealousy towards Catherine.

“In a way, you get to know these characters in a moment of crisis,” adds Blanchett. “When that personally happens to me with friends, it’s a strange privilege and responsibility. When someone is in free fall, you see the mask drop. You see all of the social niceties drop. You see the essential fears and motivations and what they will die to protect. And I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it (on-screen), as normally you get to a moment of trauma four or five episodes in, but we’re right there from the beginning. And then you’ve got to reverse engineer what actually happened.”