Cate Blanchett Set a Rule for Hiring Crew After Realizing on Set ‘There Are 62 Men and I’m the Only Woman’: ‘You Must Interview a Woman’ and a ‘Person of Color’

variety.com:

Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior Correspondent Cate Blanchett debuted her latest acting role in “The New Boy” at the Cannes Film Festival this week, but the Oscar-winner wouldn’t mind staying behind the camera a bit more. “I’m always trying to get out of acting,” Blanchett said. “I’ve been trying to stop acting my entire professional life.” Speaking at her Kering Women in Motion talk at Cannes, in conversation with her producing partner, Coco Francini, Blanchett said that her recent producing work behind the camera “feels an extension, for me, of my work as an actor.” “I remember an Australian film director saying to me really early on in my career that I had to stop taking small roles,” Blanchett recalled. “And I said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘That was the most interesting role.’ I didn’t want to play the lead.

I want that one.” “It’s about the conversation,” she continued. “And sometimes that conversation involves me being in front of the lens, and sometimes it’s back behind being a little bit too bossy sometimes from behind.

The facilitation is equally as creative… I’m as interested in the development process as I am in the process of shooting it, and then I’m really interested in the post process right through to distribution and marketing.” Blanchett and Francini are partners at Dirty Films, the production company that was formed by Blanchett and her husband, producer Andrew Upton. “The New Boy” is one of three films that Dirty Films will debut this year, along with “Shayda,” which won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival, and Apple TV’s “Fingernails” from director Christos Nikou.

Dirty Films was behind the FX series “Mrs. America,” which is where Blanchett and Francini first met and began their producing