Here's why the Oscar-winning actress, Cate Blanchette, looks so weird in Big Short director Adam McKay was released on Netflix on December 24. The movie is about two scientists trying to warn the world of an impending disaster. Social media lit up after the movie was released, with many viewers talking about Cate Blanchett's unrecognizable turn as the morning news anchor, Brie Evantee.
Cate Blanchet, the Academy Award-winning star of Blue Jasmine, Carol, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, has always been drawn to playing extraordinary characters on-screen (she even played Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There), but Adam McKay's satirical movie, Don't Look Up, takes things to a whole new level of weird. The movie features Blanchett plastered with makeup and sporting a big, bright set of fake teeth. It's unnerving to say the least, and Blanchett makes sure to show off her pearly-whites as much as she can. Every time she smiles is like nails on a chalkboard, making her one of the movies most bafflingly eerie people in the movie.
The makeup-and-teeth job isn't just weird for the sake of being weird. It is a deliberate choice, directly inspired by the scores of overly happy morning show hosts on cable news, like Ainsley Earhardt on FOX and Friends. Fox News programming is particularly infamous for its backlog of styled, dyed-blonde TV hosts spreading right-wing talking points – including, as satirized by Don't Look Up, arguments in favor of climate denial – to millions of viewers every day. Don't Look Up is openly an allegory for human civilization's stubborn refusal to deal with the problem of climate change. To emphasize this point, Don't Look Up creates a satirical allegory for climate change by swapping it with a planet-destroying comet that, like climate change, is callously dismissed by American media.
That's not to say Evantee should be exclusively interpreted as a right-wing media propaganda mouthpiece. Through all of the deliberately insufferable and off-putting morning show banter between Evantee and her co-host (Tyler Perry), Blanchett infuses Brie Evantee with a sober intelligence lurking beneath all of the makeup and fake teeth. Some critics have compared Blanchett's Don't Look Up character to Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of Morning Joe, MSNBC's more left-wing morning news show.
Fitting with the overall tone of Adam McKay's satire, Blanchett's performance in Don't Look Up is bizarre, haunting, and generally well-executed. This is to be expected not only of Cate Blanchett but Don't Look Up's exceptional star-studded cast of some of Hollywood's biggest Oscar-winning actors. Cate Blanchett has been delivering brilliant, out-there performances for over twenty years. Even as a side character, such as Evantee and her uncanny-valley appearance in Don't Look Up, Blanchett can be counted on to bring her A-game.
