Cate Blanchett's Uncredited Eyes Wide Shut, Explained

By the end of his career, Stanley Kubrick was firmly entrenched in his home in Hertfordshire, refusing to leave England for anything – not even a film. The director had moved to England in 1961 to shoot Lolita at Elstree Studios and essentially stayed put, eventually buying the now-famous Childickbury estate in 1978 and staying there until his death in 1999.

The legendary filmmaker's decision to stay in England was at least partly motivated by his dislike of Hollywood studios and his desire to create unhindered. It's all good, and the films that came out during the director's post-US speak for themselves. But sometimes it led to some frankly absurd scenarios, like when his last film “Eyes Wide Shut,” took Kubrick's tedious techniques to a new level. To be precise, Kubrick decided to make a film in which Tom Cruise goes on a night odyssey through various neighborhoods of New York, but the director wanted to film everything at Pinewood Studios in England. As a result, the streets of New York were painstakingly recreated to fit the proportions of the city. How did Kubrick manage to create such realistic fictions? He, of course, sent a team to measure the streets of NYC.

When “Eyes Wide Shut” debuted, this attention to detail at least resulted in a film that didn't show its gimmickiness. Cruise's Dr. Bill Harford travels around New York without ever discovering the English studio environment, in part because he walks around treadmill compared to the rear projection of actual shots of New York for much of the film.

Interestingly, Kubrick's refusal to leave the UK also led to an unexpected dubbing, which eventually led to a career-launching cameo for Cate Blanchett in the film, although her involvement was kept secret for two decades.

By far the most memorable visual contribution of “Eyes Wide Shut” to our cultural lexicon is an orgy scene that required a lot of research and which has since become shorthand for elite fakes of secret societies. After Dr. Bill finds out about his wife's infidelity, he stumbles through New York on a road trip that may or may not see him engage in his own one-night stand, but he ends up in a mysterious hall where New York's elite gather. , their faces are hidden behind masks, inspired by the Italian Commedia dell'arte tradition. While there, Bill encounters a masked woman who says, “I don't know who you are or what you think you're doing, but you obviously don't belong here.” She then warns him to leave while he still has the chance.

In vultureIn a 2019 oral history of the orgy scene in “Eyes Wide Shut,” actor and Stanley Kubrick's longtime assistant Leon Vitaly revealed that the voice at that moment was actually Cate Blanchett's. Although the lines were delivered by British actor Abigail Good during filming, Blanchett later adapted them after Cruise and his then-wife and co-star Nicole Kidman suggested her. “It was Cate Blanchett!” Vitaly told Vulture. “We wanted something warm and sensual, but at the same time it could be part of a ritual.”

When Kubrick died on March 7, 1999, the film's post-production was still unfinished, and Vitaly had to find a suitable voice to dub Good's lines. After all, Cruise had to be in New York, so using a British actor for this brief but important interaction wasn't ideal. Vitaly continued:

“Stanley had talked about finding that voice and that quality that we needed. After he died, I was looking for someone. Tom (Cruise) and Nicole (Kidman) came up with the idea for Kate. She was in England, so she came to Pinewood and recorded the lines.”

By the time she recorded her uncredited cameo “Eyes Wide Shut,” Cate Blanchett's star had truly risen. In 1997, she gave her breakout performance in Oscar and Lucinda, before playing Queen Elizabeth I and earning her first Oscar nomination for 1998's Elizabeth. So when she was in England while Leon Vitali was looking for someone to re-dub Abigail Good's lines, why not use her — especially with Cruise and Kidman recommending her?

Perhaps the only reason not to use Blanchett to read the lines with an American accent was that she is an Australian actress. In that respect, it would certainly have been easier for Goode to simply improvise an American accent on set, but neither Kubrick nor Vitaly seem to have thought that far ahead. Either that or the director was toying with the idea of ​​keeping Goode's line intact. He had already shown some uncertainty when it came to the film itself, causing the orgy scene to be heavily delayed while he made creative decisions. the devil Kubrick even came close to casting Steve Martin as the lead in Eyes Wide Shut. so he may not have fully thought through Goode's line when they shot her scene.

Good, meanwhile, told Vulture that she always wondered if what she read would make it or not, but didn't seem at all disappointed that it didn't. As she told the outlet:

“When all the other girls left, I was in this wonderful position of being able to work with two incredible artists. I was on set with Tom and Stanley and found things on our own. Stanley asked my opinion a lot. Me and Tom were one of the last people, that he ever filmed.”