In T-minus two hours, Leila George is leaving for the airport. Destination: Venice, Italy. As we jump onto a Zoom call with the actress, she is noticeably excited but also a ball of nerves. The trip represents some big firsts for the Australian: her first time attending the illustrious Venice Film Festival, her first time watching her new Apple TV+ series Disclaimer with an audience, and her first big and prestigious red carpet. The anticipation is at an all-time high.
The premiere went off without a hitch. Styled by Kate Young, George wore two stunning looks—a diamond-encrusted Dior gown and a plunging Alessandra Rich number, both accompanied by Chopard jewels. The show received a raucous six-minute standing ovation.
Disclaimer is, without a doubt, one of the year’s most anticipated shows. Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón is at the helm making his television debut, and Cate Blanchett stars in the gripping seven-parter. Based on the book of the same name by Renée Knight, the thriller follows well-respected documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft as she discovers she is the prominent character of a new book that threatens to expose her deepest, darkest secret. As the events of a tragic encounter come to light, Catherine’s life and career are at stake, and the lines between fact and fiction become blurred.
Cuarón, Blanchett, Apple TV+—it’s a project any actor would dream of being a part of, so when George got the call to meet with the famed director, it didn’t seem real at first. Almost two years to the date of our conversation, George heard from her London agent that Cuarón wanted to speak with her the next day about a project he was working on. “This was one of those mythical, legendary things you hear about in the industry, where someone just gets a phone call out of the blue, and you don’t ever think that’s going to happen. You’ve heard rumors that things like this exist, but until it happens to you, you don’t quite believe that that’s ever possible,” the actress tells us. Wanting to make a great impression, she immediately bought the book and read it overnight. She thought knowing the material would earn her brownie points with Cuarón. “He was like, ‘No, you cheated!'” she laughs. He offered her the role of young Catherine on the spot.
Three days later, George was on a plane to London. She packed up her entire life—knowing in some respects she would be leaving Los Angeles for good—and didn’t look back.
George had an exciting challenge ahead of her. Up to this point, she had played a post-apocalyptic socialite in Mortal Engines, a woman on the run in the American Western The Kid, and a young Janine “Smurf” Cody in Animal Kingdom. But Catherine was unlike any character George had taken on before. “I’ve played a lot of strong female characters, but one who does it in such a seductive way was really fun to me,” she says.
Without giving too much away ahead of the show’s October 11 premiere, there are two versions of Catherine’s hidden story, which takes place on an Italian holiday: the perspective of a grieving mother looking to piece together her son’s accidental death and the real one. This juxtaposition was another interesting challenge for George. While a young Catherine—selfish and manipulative in her actions—is easy to dislike at first, George experienced it the other way around. While reading the book and the script, even while filming, she was always sympathetic to Catherine, finding reasons behind everything she did. It wasn’t until watching the show later on that George saw what everyone else was seeing. “I was like, ‘Gosh, she is awful.’ But I didn’t know that when I was playing her.” she says. “It was wild to really watch the show and for the first time see the evil in it.”
George shares Catherine with fellow Aussie and Oscar winner Blanchett. The two met once before when George was much younger, and even here, they crossed paths only briefly for an informal handoff of the character. “She was so generous with me,” George says of her experience working with the star. “This is her character that she’s created. This is her baby. I would have assumed it would be pretty daunting to hand that over to someone at a certain point, but I didn’t feel that with her at all.” The two talked through some of the scenes and Blanchett’s ideas for them, but that was it. “She just said, ‘This is you now,'” she adds.
Outside of mimicking some of Blanchett’s movements and physicality and working with a dialect coach to match her voice, George had a lot of freedom in her portrayal of the character. For her more intimate scenes in the show, of which there are quite a few, George and co-star Louis Partridge (Enola Holmes) worked with intimacy coordinator Samantha Murray to get the scenes just right. George likens working with Murray to choreographing a dance or a fight scene. Every move is meticulously planned out. To try to avoid any awkwardness, George and Partridge spent quality time getting to know one another while filming in Italy and utilized different exercises, like elongated hugs, to get more comfortable with physically touching each other. “We just became close enough that we trusted each other and were there for each other, and it was so lovely. He was really such a gentleman about it,” she says.
As vulnerable and heavy as the material was at times, filming was anything but for George. While half her scenes were shot on a London soundstage, the other half were filmed on the beaches of Italy, an indescribable luxury that George doesn’t think she’ll ever get again. With most of the shooting taking place at sunrise and sunset, the crew would wake up early and work until about 10 or 11 a.m. and then enjoy a bountiful Italian buffet lunch complete with mozzarella and pasta stands, a parmesan cheese wheel, and a table of desserts like pistachio croissants. Following lunch, they would have a little nap for an hour or two and come back at 4 p.m. to shoot again. “It was such a dream. I had my dog with me, and we would go for swims in the middle of the day. We were so spoiled,” George says of the lavish schedule.
As our time winds down with George (she has a plane to catch), it’s clear that Disclaimer has left a lasting impression on the actress. The show was a turning point for her in a lot of ways, and she’s now hungry to work with more auteurs and directors like Cuarón who make her feel safe enough to give herself completely to a role. “It all was this magical Cinderella thing, and I’m waiting for the clock to strike midnight and have everything turn back into a pumpkin, and it just hasn’t happened yet. I’m just riding the wave. It really was some kind of crazy, incredible dream,” she says.
Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ on October 11.
Photographer: Ashley Batz
Stylist: Carolina Orrico
Hairstylist: Graham Nation
Makeup Artist: Pati Dubroff
