Hollywood Movies

Cate Blanchett, Abbie Cornish, Shekhar Kapur Interviews

with Rebecca Murray

Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett returns as Queen Elizabeth I in Universal Pictures' Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Joining Blanchett at the movie's premiere were director Shekhar Kapur and Abbie Cornish who plays her favorite lady-in-waiting.

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Transcript: Cate Blanchett, Abbie Cornish, Shekhar Kapur Interviews

Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the World Premiere of Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Director Shekhar Kapur

Is there going to be a third Elizabeth movie?

Shekhar Kapur: "Oh yeah, absolutely."

But you can't do it without Cate Blanchett.

Shekhar Kapur: "No."

She'll be back?

Shekhar Kapur: "She'll be back."

How do you convince her to do it because she said she didn't want to the second one and she came back for that?

Shekhar Kapur: "You don't know my powers of persuasion (laughing). I can flutter my eyelids."

What are you going to focus on in the third film, if you do one?

Shekhar Kapur: "Look, you've seen this one? This one is about people with absolute power. We think they're divine. We kind of make them immortal. They see themselves as divine. And the third one is now you're divine and you're going to be like one, you're going to go out into battle and face mortality. And how do you face mortality in divinity? It's like a trilogy. The last of the trilogy of her life of power."

So the third one will definitely be centered on her character and not so much any of the people still around her in her life?

Shekhar Kapur: "No, it's her… The third one will be her looking back at her life and interpreting her own life. This is our interpretation of her life; that will be Elizabeth's interpretation of her own life."

Cate Blanchett ('Queen Elizabeth I')

Is there anything you're still learning about this woman or do you think you have her down now?

Cate Blanchett: "No, never. I mean with any complex character, by the time you finish you just want to go back and start again. All you can think of are the omissions. And I think that's why there's so many stories told about Elizabeth I because there's so many, it depends on where you shine the light as to how her character sort of appears in the story. But something I think that endlessly comes up is her isolation, and I think this is something that the film really explores. Just how utterly sort of emotionally and romantically inexperienced she was, but yet how worldly she was. It's a really, I think there's an adolescent girl inside this really complex, mature diplomat. It's a really interesting thing to play."

How could you say no to a third one then?

Cate Blanchett: "Oh, because we only finished it like two months ago. Have you been speaking to Shekhar?"

Abbie Cornish ('Bess Throckmorton')

How much extra research did you wind up doing about her, other than what was in the script?

Abbie Cornish: "As much as I could. I read everything that could be read, which wasn't an incredible amount. And it's funny, you know, a lot of my inspiration character-wise came from a portrait of Bess. I found this one portrait that just really seemed to speak volumes about maybe what her spirit was like. There was something very soft and delicate and gentle about her hand. And her eyes were almost like water, liquid and very fluid. At the same time she had this little smile that was a little pursed, which made me think of the court – the restraint that that can sometimes bring in. And also the historian and just speaking with hair and makeup, and anyone that had any other information. Just chatting and finding [out things]."

How tough was it to make her her own woman when she was so much a part of the Queen?

Abbie Cornish: "I mean, for me Bess always was her own woman, I think, when I initially read the script. I think actually what the process of rehearsals and talking about it was to bring these two characters almost closer together, to let the mirror be more prominent. That's what Shekhar talks about, this mirror between these two women, these two characters. So, yeah."