Cate Blanchett and Alfonso Cuaron co-recorded 'Disclaimer' at Apple

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“Disclaimer” pulls the rug out from the audience before they can settle down.

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There is a lack of empathy for the main character, Cate Blanchett's Catherine Ravenscroft. There is no luxury in the banality of her everyday life, at work or in her luxurious London home with her snobbish husband (Sacha Baron Cohen) and directionless, resentful adult son (Kodi Smit-McPhee). From the beginning of the seven-episode series, which will start broadcasting on Apple TV+ on Friday, we only know that she is an acclaimed documentary director, whose guest welcomes Christiane Amanpour.

But almost immediately, her life begins to take off when she receives an anonymous, self-published book about a young mother vacationing in Italy with her young son that is shockingly familiar. A woman in the book meets a young man who later drowns while trying to save her son. When the police question her, she denies knowing him and returns to London. It's a memory that Catherine has long hidden and suppressed, and now it has come to light in a spectacularly embarrassing and reputation-damaging way with a series of intimate, provocative photos that a young man, Jonathan (Louis Partridge), had taken the previous evening.

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“Disclaimer” throws you into the fire; And like everyone else on the show, from the strangers reading the book to Catherine's husband, you start making assumptions about her and judging her. Even Blanchett wasn't immune to reading the script. She wondered: Is this woman terrible?

“I was shocked by the multi-layered assessment of this character,” Blanchett said. “The challenge and the agony of playing such a character is that the crisis comes as soon as you meet him. “We don't know anything about her, we only know what people say about her.”

Told in seven chapters, the psychological thriller was written by Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuaron, who read Renee Knight's book before making “Roma.” The director had never dealt with a longer form before, but while writing the script he realized that this was the only way to tell the story in a satisfactory way. Instead of dealing with the ins and outs of making a TV show, he decided to do it his way: like a movie, or rather seven movies. After all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, David Lynch and Krzysztof Kieślowski also did it.

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Cuaron wrote “Catherine” solely with Blanchett in mind, an actor he knew who possessed the incredible range and sophistication required for the role. He teased that he was also jealous of his friends Alejandro Inarritu and Guillermo del Toro, who had already had the honor of directing (and raving about) it. What he didn't expect, and what pleasantly surprised him, was her complete and total commitment as a producer, even as filming took almost a year.

“I like collaboration,” Blanchett said. “I'm interested in the whole thing. I think you need to know when you're going to be useful and when you need to just sit back and be quiet.

Cuaron said he sometimes agrees with her suggestions. Other times he chose a different path and usually regretted it. But they consulted on everything from the smallest details (like prop placement) to the biggest, including the script and the casting of Kevin Kline as Stephen Brigstocke, the father of the young man Catherine had met many years ago. He also recently lost his wife, left his job, and has no time to just think about how his happy life turned so tragic. Revenge is on his mind.

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The series plays with form and narrative, with flashbacks, different perspectives, timelines, and narrators conveying information. At first, Amanpour, wanting to compliment Catherine, aptly put it this way: “Be careful with the narrative and the form. Their power can bring us closer to the truth, but it can also be a weapon of great manipulation power.”

In that spirit, Cuaron's longtime cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, even suggested hiring another cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel, to also add another visual element. Don't worry if this sounds like you need a film degree to recognize or appreciate the difference between Lubezki's take and Delbonnel's.

“It's not about noticing,” Cuaron said. “It's about experience and following different narratives. We try to approach each of these narratives with a different language.”

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“Disclaimer” also premiered last month at the Venice Film Festival. Although the festival often features original series alongside feature films, they are rarely discussed in the same breath as the competition list of Oscar candidates. However, the “reservation” struck a different note. In a program that included all forms of ambitious cinema from contemporary masters, some even called it “the best film of the festival.” Viewers were shown episodes one through four on one day and the final three the next.

Cuaron allows viewers to manage their own viewing schedule, whether or not it premieres on Apple TV+ (two episodes on October 11, two on October 18, and one every Friday thereafter), who wait to watch in two groups divided according to the time we were in Venice, that's not a bad idea either. Blanchett and Cuaron agree that the bottom line is that attention is key. It's also something you might want to watch again after the finale airs on November 8.

“We talked about the hope that people would come back and watch the film again and have a completely different perspective on things that we take for granted,” Blanchett said.

Cuaron went a step further: “The second view should give a completely different interpretation than the first view.”

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