Director Alfonso Cuaron is taking on prestige television with “Disclaimer,” a seven-part psychological thriller starring fellow Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, but he said Monday the end result is still a film — a very long one.
It is not the first time that the Mexican filmmaker has worked on the small screen — he co-created the short-lived series “Believe,” which aired on NBC a decade ago.
But “Disclaimer” — which was screened at the Toronto film festival on Monday after a world premiere in Venice — is his first major TV project since he scooped up Academy Awards for directing “Gravity” and “Roma.”
The limited series, the first project in Cuaron’s multi-year deal with Apple TV+, stars Blanchett as Catherine Ravenscroft, a journalist whose life is upended when she receives a novel that seemingly recounts the intimate details of her darkest secret.
That buried indiscretion involved the dead son of Stephen Brigstocke (Kline), a widower with a mean streak who is clearly bent on revenge.
Rounding out the cast are a trio of Oscar nominees — Sacha Baron Cohen as Catherine’s husband Robert, Lesley Manville as Stephen’s wife Nancy, and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Catherine and Robert’s son Nicholas.
Australian actress Leila George plays a younger version of Catherine.
On the red carpet, the 62-year-old Cuaron said while he has the utmost respect for those who work primarily in television, his process in making “Disclaimer” was not all that different from how he approaches feature films.
“The idea was to make a movie that ended up lasting for five and a half hours, and cut it in seven chapters. In reality, it’s a movie,” he said.
His adaptation of the 2015 thriller of the same name by Renee Knight — which will stream on Apple TV+ from October 11 — jumps back and forth in time to reveal the sordid corners of the characters’ intersecting lives.
But, as journalist Christiane Amanpour warns in a cameo at the start, “beware of narrative and form.”
“Not everything you see is necessarily true,” Blanchett said in a Q&A after the Toronto screening.
“The interesting thing, I think, for all of us playing this is that we were playing a version of reality.”
‘Meticulous’
Cuaron said that Knight had sent him the galleys for her novel before it was printed.
“I immediately saw a film, but at the time, I could not find how to make it work as a conventional-length film,” he said at the Q&A session.
“And it wasn’t until later that this idea (of a limited series) came up and I have to say, the process of writing the script was very quick.”
The director said the casting process was a “dialogue” between Blanchett and himself, who signed on after reading the first three episodes.
“I read it and I threw it across the room,” she told the Toronto audience.
“Whenever you throw anything across the room, you realize that you’re confronted and challenged by it.”
Kline praised Cuaron’s way of working.
“He told me, ‘It’ll take as long as it takes,’ and that’s how we did it. And he’s very meticulous, detail-oriented, and fastidious,” he said on the red carpet.
After the screening of three episodes of “Disclaimer,” organizers announced that the entire series would be shown on Sunday, the closing day of the festival.
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has sought in recent years to build up its primetime programming.
Also on this year’s schedule are “Families Like Ours” from Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (“Another Round”), and “Faithless” from Tomas Alfredson (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”).
