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Cate Blanchett Gives Stephen Colbert Surprise Answer On Where Her Compass Lies

By Pang Chieh Ho
Published on: 04:27 PST, Mar 5, 2017

Oscar winner Cate Blanchett gave many hilarious answers on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert about her Broadway play The Present, the Oscars kerfuffle, and why Ocean’s Eight is called Ocean’s Eight.

Blanchett was on Stephen Colbert’s show to promote her Broadway debut The Present, a Chekhov play that has never been realized on stage before. The Present, a romance-farce-tragedy about people going through various mid-life crises, was updated by Blanchett’s husband, the playwright Andrew Upton, to occur during the 1990s, when Putin was coming into power.

The ascension of Putin, the milieu in which the play is set, might hold special relevance for American audiences, Blanchett says. Though she didn’t mention Donald Trump by name, Blanchett was no doubt referring to the current president of the United States.

“Andrew’s updated it [the play] to the 90s in Russia, when Putin was coming into power in Russia – which seems particularly relevant to what’s going on in this country at the moment – and with the rise of the oligarchs. So it’s all about as you move forward in life, what’s your moral compass and where does kindness and humanity sit in a really brutal world.”

When asked by Stephen Colbert about where her moral compass lies and where kindness and humanity sits, Cate Blanchett surprised the audience, however, with a very cheeky answer. “My vagina,” she replied, without skipping a beat.

Despite her statuesque beauty and the image audiences may associate with her from her roles in movies, from the otherworldly Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings franchise to the troubled, elegant Carol in lesbian romance Carol, Blanchett often shows a more light-hearted side on talk shows. During an interview with Jimmy Fallon in late January this year, Blanchett flustered the host when she jokingly shaped her wad of gum into a phallic object and later surprised him when she demonstrated that she could belch on command (she proceeded to do it three times just to get her point across).

On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Cate Blanchett also gave a flippant answer regarding her new movie Ocean’s Eight. When Colbert asked the actress why the movie was titled Ocean’s Eight, seeing as the first movie in the franchise was titled Ocean’s Eleven, Blanchett skewered Hollywood and its female representation.

“Because only eight women work in Hollywood.”

Blanchett, who has won two Oscars in her career – one for Best Actress for Blue Jasmine and one for Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator – was also asked by Colbert her thoughts on the Oscars Best Picture mix-up.

“[It’s] awful. It’s sort of like being married to the wrong person.”

The actress also confides that the most upsetting part of the Oscars mix-up for her at first was how President Trump might perceive it as a personal victory, given the antagonistic relationship between the president and Hollywood.

“Since this inauguration, this notion of the cultural elite has really gotten going, so anyone who has got a voice or success in the cultural industry is suddenly marginalized or their voice isn’t considered significant or worth being part of the popular parlance. And they kind of handed it to the administration on Sunday night.”

Blanchett was worried that the Oscars hullabaloo would unfairly give Donald Trump more ammunition to target the movie industry. The actress herself has been a vocal critic of the president and, with the rest of The Present cast, donned the symbolic pussy hat during the curtain call of her Broadway show in support of the Women’s March in New York, according to Limelight.

[Featured Image by Theo Wargo/Getty Images]

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