Kevin Kline, from left, Cate Blanchett, and series director Alfonso Cuaron pose for photographers upon arrival for the press conference of the television series ‘Disclaimer’ during the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)
VENICE, Italy — Alfonso Cuarón is the first to admit that he does not know how to make a television series. He might even be too old to learn how, he said.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker has technically now made a series, the seven-part AppleTV+ show “Disclaimer,” four episodes of which premiered Thursday at the Venice Film Festival. But he did it his way: Like a film.
Based on Renée Knight’s 2015 book of the same name, “Disclaimer” is a psychological thriller about a documentarian and journalist, Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett), who discovers she’s a character in a novel that reveals her darkest secret.
Cuarón, Blanchett, and Kevin Kline all made the journey to the Italian film festival to debut and speak about the show before it begins streaming on Oct. 11.
“I read the book and immediately in my mind I saw a film, but I didn’t know how to make that film,” Cuarón, the director of films including “Gravity” and “Roma,” said in a news conference Thursday. “It was way too long. I could not shape it as such.”
It was only later, he said, that he thought it might work in a longer form, inspired by predecessors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, David Lynch, and Krzysztof Kieślowski.
“I was intrigued and that was the point of departure,” Cuarón said.
He started writing with one name in mind for Catherine: Blanchett, terrified that she might say no. Not only did she not say no, she also was the one who suggested Kline for a British character. Sacha Baron Cohen plays her husband in the show and Kodi Smit-McPhee plays her son.
All soon realized that approaching it as a film, and shooting it as a film, would take much longer than a normal series. He even enlisted two cinematographers, Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel, to add a distinct visual language to the different perspectives in the story. All told, it took about a year.
“It was a really long process,” Cuarón said. “And I really feel for the actors because they were stuck with the characters for way too long.”
Blanchett laughed that they were “still recovering.”
The final three episodes will screen Friday at the festival. Though the festival is most known for its feature film premieres, it does play host to select series as well. This year those also include Joe Wright’s Mussolini biopic “M: Son of the Century,” Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The New Years” and Thomas Vinterberg’s “Families Like Ours.”