Cate Blanchett reveals that her TÁR role was originally imagined as a man

“When Todd [Field, writer and director] was thinking about it, TÁR was originally a male role,” the Mrs. America actor says. “Because the film is a meditation on power, you would’ve had a much less nuanced examination of that. We understand what the corruption of male power looks like, but we need to unpack what power is itself.”

Blanchett quickly became an Oscar frontrunner for her performance as Lydia Tár, a woman who has fought hard to become one of the world’s preeminent conductors–and becomes embroiled in scandal along the way. Considering there’s no shortage of stories about difficult, abrasive men in creative fields, the swap makes TÁR stand out even more as one of the year’s top films.

“The character of Lydia—even though there’s a very clear understanding in the community in which she moves of who she is and how she thinks and what she’s achieved—she’s someone who has become estranged from herself,” Blanchett describes. “Being at the head of a major institution and therefore being in a position of being able to, and expected to, wield a certain level of authority, that has separated her from not only her craft and her creative instinct, but also from who she is.”

TÁR is now in theaters and available on demand.