At the Venice Premiere of Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer, we interview stars Leila George, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Louis Partridge about the Apple TV+ series.
Alfonso Cuarón’s new series Disclaimer, soon on Apple TV+, has just had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where we sat down for an interview with stars Leila George, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Louis Partridge. Adapted from Renée Knight’s 2015 novel of the same name, Disclaimer revolves around an acclaimed writer named Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) who one day receives a manuscript whose author is unknown. As she realizes that the book contains details of her own past, including a dark secret she thought no living person knew about, finding the author becomes an obsession that sends her on a downward spiral that ultimately affects not only her own life, but that of the people around her too.
Behind this already highly compelling premise lie even more intriguing narratives that make Alfonso Cuarón’s series a complex tapestry of characters, each with their own truths and agendas, and each with one or more secret they’ve kept hidden for a very long time. There’s Catherine’s family, made of her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee, of The Power of the Dog). There’s a man named Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), who has just lost his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville). And then there’s a whole new set of characters who belong to a completely different timeline, when a younger Catherine’s (Leila George) life somehow became connected to that of a nineteen years old boy named Jonathan (Louis Partridge) and things became even more complicated for both.
At the series’ World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival, we spoke with stars Leila George, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Louis Partridge. Here’s what they told us about working with Alfonso Cuarón and with each other, the challenges of playing their respective characters, the importance of lighting in Disclaimer, and more. Read the interview below!
The Venice Film Festival Premiere of Disclaimer
Congratulations for this amazing series! What does it feel like to bring it to Venice?
Leila George: It’s like a dream!
Kodi Smit-McPhee: It’s very special.
Louis Partridge: Yeah, it truly is a fairytale. It’s amazing.
I know you saw part of the series last night at the premiere. Is it what you expected it to be? It feels to me like your scenes are so specific and focused on your own timelines that it must have been hard to imagine what the final result would be like, particularly in a show like this, with so many characters who all have so much going on that we don’t understand at first.
L.P.: It might have been more difficult for you, as an audience, coming in with all the different storylines, which I’d imagine must have been quite hard to put together in a cohesive way. Obviously Alfonso has done it very well, but there are different timelines, there’s the same timeline with different couples, and then there are different perspectives. So I think there’s a lot for you guys, first time viewers. For us, or at least for me, it was kind of… you’ve got your character, and you’re focusing on that, and it all makes sense and fits around you.
L.G.: Yeah, when you have a script, you can use it as a kind of reference and go back and forth. I also read the book, I don’t know if you guys did that?
K.S-M.: I doubled!
L.G.: Yeah, when you have a script, you can use it as a kind of reference and go back and forth. I also read the book; I don’t k now if you guys did that? I had a call with Alfonso before I got the job, and those director meetings really scare me, because I never know how I’m supposed to prepare. “Can’t I just do a scene for you?,” you know? “I’m gonna talk myself out of this.” And so the only thing I could think to do was read the book overnight. [Kodi and Louis are surprised] That’s why I read it. And then I I called him, and he starts telling me the story. And halfway through, I think I’m gonna get brownie points by saying, “Oh, actually, I read the book last night.” And he goes, “Nooo! Why did you read the book?”
[everyone laughs]
Why didn’t he want you to read it?
L.G.: You know, I think [the series] does great justice to Renée Knight’s book, and it really tells that story for sure. But [Cuarón] also makes it his own, in a way, so I think he would have preferred me to have the script as my only reference. Not that people shouldn’t read the book! It’s amazing.
Leila George, Kodi Smit-McPhee & Louis Partridge on Working with Alfonso Cuarón
What was it like to work with Alfonso Cuarón? What’s he like on set?
Kodi Smit-McPhee: You know, it’s a mix. He’s very versatile. He can keep you on your toes in many ways, but he can also be very direct. He can be assertive, which I like, because – [to Leila and Louis] I don’t know if you guys can speak to this? – as an actor, sometimes you have a vision; sometimes you have a direction that you intuitively know to go in. But other times you can feel a bit lost, or like you’re chasing a bit of a magnum opus, and that’s where he can do an incredible job of stepping in and taking the reins. But at the same time, he also can be very freeing: he lets you play, and he lets you add your little things. Like when he’s doing these big, long takes that can go for 7 minutes – or 11 minutes, for you guys! [to Leila and Louis]. You know, as you redo them, you’re adding little bits to it. Yeah, it’s incredible to see him work.
Leila George: It’s also such a luxury to work with suchan amazing director like that, because you look at his films and there’s not a bad performance in it. So the trust that you can have… It really is not something that you get on every job, where you feel like, you know, “Oh my gosh, do I need to protect myself from what this director is asking me to do?” But with him, there’s no question: you can trust everything that he’s asking you to do, and just do it because it’s gonna work, and that’s really liberating. [Louis nods in agreement] You don’t have to also have in your head that you’re protecting yourself as an actor, because you just keep yourself in his hands.
Louis Partridge: I felt very much like that. I came to set, on the first day, and then I sort of gave my Jonathan… [laughs] and he just said, “That’s not quite what I had in mind. We should talk.” And so we called each other every morning after that, for quite a while, and joked that [before that,] we hadn’t said a word about [his approach to the character], and I had quite a different idea of who Jonathan was. And so I was very much like, “Right. Drop all that.” [smiles] Let’s do this.
In some ways, it was really liberating, because I didn’t have this hangover of “It’d be really nice if I brought that to the scene.” It was more like,”I’m kind of your prop”. It’s how I imagine Hitchcock might have used his actors, you know? Which was kind of liberating: I knew exactly what he wanted. He was assertive, and he told me what was working. It was a new a new way way of acting, for me. I enjoyed it.
The Challenges of Leila George, Kodi Smit-McPhee & Louis Partridge’s Respective Roles in Disclaimer
It must have been quite a challenge for you, Leila and Louis, to each play at least two completely different versions of your own characters – even three characters for Louis, if we count some scenes at the start of episode 1. How did you approach this, and was it hard to get rid of a version of your character and become another?
Leila George: It’s a challenge, but it’s a really fun challenge to have, and one that I’ve never had before. It’s a really exciting thing to do as an actor, to kind of take that on and figure out how you’re going to do it.
Louis Partridge: It was also just such a stark contrast [between the different versions of their characters] that it didn’t feel like I was carrying bits from the previous work over to the later stuff. It wasn’t easy by any means, but they were so far apart that it just felt like doing something completely different, and it was under great direction.
I know what you mean about these characters being so different at various stages of the series! I was blown away by it when I realized what was going on!
L.G.: It’s really cool to hear people’s reactions. Obviously, when we watch it, we know what’s happening, so it’s hard to be like…, oh, what? [everyone laughs]
L.P.: It’s that loss for words: it’s the reaction you want.
Kodi, when I saw your scenes throughout the show, I kept thinking, “He’s just acting by himself in front of a phone!” And this was also while also having to bring out so much emotion! How did you manage to do this?
Kodi Smit-McPhee: To be honest, the type of person I am, I like to be alone. I spend a lot of my life alone: I’m a bit of a hermit. But it actually was tough, because a lot of the hardest stuff to do, aside from obviously going to those dark places that the character goes, was the technical aspects of the phone. A lot of the time I was in a rig where my arms had to stay still, there was green screen around, and I was watching another screen where a text would come through, and I had to time my writing with a pre recorded text. I wasn’t controlling the screen; I had to move my hands at the same time that texts were coming through, so there was a whole other side to it. Thank God I’ve done some special effects stuff before, where I knew to have patience with that. But that was actually the stuff that took my brain for a little bit.
You also have a few scenes with other people – especially one with Cate Blanchett – that are so emotional.
K.S-M.: Yeah, it was tough to go from those lonely scenes into the more, I guess, heavy and emotional ones. It was going from one spectrum to the other. You felt that kind of… for lack of better words, impending doom coming of those days that were bigger and demanded more.
Did you get to spend any time with your co-stars before shooting, particularly Cate and Sacha Baron Cohen, who play your parents?
K.S-M.: It was really kind of landed and hit the ground running. For the most part, we shot not perfectly chronologically, but in terms of character arcs. We didn’t do the crazy end scenes in the beginning; it was a little bit consistent. So for me to be distant from Kate and Sacha actually worked, you know? We didn’t have that relationship together, from the get go, and then we kind of built it as we went on: it totally worked for the story.
What I really loved about your character and the way you played her, Leila, is that we understand right away that you’re a younger version of Catherine, whom we first meet when Cate Blanchett plays her. You can absolutely see it’s the same person, yet, at the same time, you both make the character your own.
L.G.: I think it’s a bit daunting, the idea of playing someone that’s so incredible, and at the absolute top of her game. I don’t know if there’s anyone better than Cate, and and we didn’t have much time to rehearse or talk together. She was, really, super generous in just handing it over to me and saying, “This is you, now. Do your thing with it.” We talked a little about a couple of scenes, and I got to see her physicality and what she was doing… But it was great. I’m glad to hear that it had a seamless kind of effect.
The Shooting Process and the Importance of Lighting on the Set of Disclaimer
Do you have any good memories from the set?
Leila George: I remember that, when we were on the beach, we we were shooting very quickly: it was all about getting the light and we were just working all the time. But when we got into the interiors in the studio, there was more time – like, more sitting.
Louis Partridge: Oooh, yes. [both laugh]
L.G.: Didn’t we once get bored and you [looks at Louis] were trying to throw Skittles in my mouth?
L.P.: [laughs] I don’t doubt that! [everyone laughs]
L.G.: Those are always my favorite moments.
Kodi Smit-McPhee: They really prioritize lighting, you know? Chivo [cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki] could take center stage more than I’ve ever seen in any film, and because it was something that I’d never experienced before, you felt like, “This is so unorthodox! How are we going to get things done?” The timeline and the call sheets kind of disappeared sometimes, because the priority was to make it look good and feel real. But now that we see it… Sure, I was twiddling my thumbs sometimes for four hours on my trailer, but you see it now, and you’re like, “Oh, my God, it is beautiful!”. There’s no way to replace that without doing what we did.
L.G.: It’s gorgeous. It’s kind of what makes watching really intimate scenes in a theater with other people manageable, just because you’re like, “Oh my gosh, we look sooooo good!” [everyone laughs]. I’m the kind of person that’ll stand in front of a mirror and pinpoint everything that’s wrong with me, and I watch those scenes, and I just want Chiba to light everything!
L.P.: …To light my life!
L.G.: And my house! It’s magical. You’re not thinking, “Oh God, everyone in the theater is looking at me doing this stuff.” You’re like, “How does he make me look like that ? It’s just amazing.
What Leila George, Kodi Smit-McPhee & Louis Partridge Look for in a Role, and What Drew Them to Disclaimer
What do you usually look for in a role, and what drew you to Disclaimer in particular?
Leila George: It’s Alfonso, for sure. It’s like, “no question, I’m in.”
Kodi Smit-McPhee: Yeah. I feel, it a script comes through and it’s an indie… I’m someone who kind of stays out of the scene, in my industry, for better or worse: you could name a lot of names, and I might not know them. So if an indie comes through, and I’m unfamiliar with the ensemble or the director, mainly, all I’m looking for – which is why I kind of honor being in a place of unknowing, sometimes – is, I just want to be moved by the story and compelled, and get to the end of it and feel like it wasn’t a struggle.
But of course, with something like this, when you do know, and you’re familiar with his body of work… It’s almost like, no question. It’s a deal sealed, before you read, but then reading it and and finding what he’s interested in, in the story that he wants to tell next, it’s an honor to be invited into it.
Louis Partridge: Yeah, I would agree. The team behind it t was just kind of jaw-droppingly great. I didn’t actually know about the latter half of the story, and that I would have to be playing two sides of the same character: it was kind of a shock when Alfonso sent me the seven episodes. So it wasn’t like I was really interested in playing this contrast. It was very much Alfonso; I met him in the room, and he really directed me. He was really watching me and really attuned, and I felt that all throughout filming. Often, he wouldn’t look at the monitor; he would just be watching us and sort of mouthing along with what we were saying. He’s really attuned to the to the details and everything. It was what drew me to this. That, and Cate, of course.
Thank you for speaking with us!
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Disclaimer had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 29-30, 2024 and will be available to stream on Apple TV+ from October 11, 2024.
