Cate Blanchett Was Secretly Featured in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Orgy This Entire Time
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“Eyes Wide Shut” is one of Stanley Kubrick’s most divisive movies, but it does contain one of his most iconic sequences: The orgy scene. Vulture critic and writer Bilge Ebiri has published an oral history on the sequence in which assistant director Brian Cook, choreographer Yolande Snaith, composer Jocelyn Pook, and more weigh in on its months-long making. One of the biggest revelations in the oral history comes from Leon Vitali, Kubrick’s assistant who gained fame in front of the camera as Lord Bullingdon in “Barry Lyndon.” According to Vitali, Cate Blanchett had a never-revealed cameo in the famous orgy scene as the voice of the mysterious masked woman, played on set by Abigail Good.
“It was Cate Blanchett!” Vitali said of the voice. “We wanted something warm and sensual but that at the same time could be a part of a ritual. Stanley had talked about finding this voice and this quality that we needed. After he’d died, I was looking for someone. It was actually Tom [Cruise] and Nicole [Kidman] who came up with the idea of Cate. She was in England at the time, so she came into Pinewood and recorded the lines.”
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Blanchett was a rising star during the “Eyes Wide Shut” post-production phase. The actress was coming off a breakout performance in 1997’s “Oscar and Lucinda” and then a star-making leading role as Queen Elizabeth I in Shekhar Kapur’s 1998 royal drama “Elizabeth.” The film earned Blanchett her first Oscar nomination.
Good told Vulture she wondered during the filming of the orgy scene whether or not her voice would be dubbed in the editing room because she didn’t have an American accent. The actress said she has no hard feelings against Stanley and cherishes her time making “Eyes Wide Shut,” especially because it was the last film Kubrick got to make before his death.
“When all the other girls left, I was in this amazing position of being able to work with two incredible artists,” Good said, “I was on the set with Tom and Stanley, finding things on our own. Stanley asked my opinion a lot. Me and Tom were among the last people he ever filmed.”
Head over to Vulture to read the “Eyes Wide Shut” oral history in its entirety.
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