Is Cate Blanchett’s character in ‘Disclaimer’ awful or misunderstood? The actor reflects on the notion of truth as TV series screens at TIFF

We first meet Catherine Ravenscroft, the lead played by Cate Blanchett in the miniseries “Disclaimer,” when she is on a personal high, as she receives an award for her investigative journalism work.

Her husband is adoringly by her side, popping open vintage wine to celebrate. But the seven-part psychological thriller — which will screen weekly beginning Oct. 11 on Apple TV Plus and makes its Canadian premiere Monday at the Toronto International Film Festival — then plunges into the precipitous downfall of Ravenscroft as dark secrets unearthed from her past threaten her family and career.

The rush to judgment is heady and disorienting. Ravenscroft is labelled “awful” and sometimes “awful, awful” by everyone.

“Disclaimer,” which is based on the 2015 novel by Renée Knight, also stars Kevin Kline and Lesley Manville, as bereaved parents of a boy connected to Ravenscroft’s past. An unrecognizable Sacha Baron Cohen plays Ravenscroft’s husband.

Shifting and blurring points of view make the series, written, directed and executive produced by Alfonso Cuarón, a taut and immersive viewing experience. Blanchett spoke about the project from Venice, where she appeared in support of the show.

She arrives in Toronto for the Monday afternoon screening, one of a trio of events at TIFF. She will also attend the premiere of the black comedy “Rumours” on Monday evening and receive the Share Her Journey Groundbreaker Award at the TIFF Tribute Awards fundraiser on Sunday.

Making Cate Blanchett laugh in conversation — whether it is real or not, as she is a very, very good actor — is wholly satisfying. She gave a great belly laugh when asked “Is it hard to play a woman that no one likes?” Then, ever the pro, she deflected the focus onto her director.

“I think it was more of an exercise in form, for Alfonso Cuarón,” she said of the four-time Oscar-winning director of “Roma” and “Children of Men.”

“It was a challenge as an actor to play someone who didn’t speak, through choice, but who also was prevented from speaking for such a long portion of the story, so that there’s time for this series of multifarious judgments to be made about the character and what had transpired.” Not having the dialogue to express the inner workings of the character was difficult, she said.

Here my cat broke into the Zoom conversation, which was freaky, because “Disclaimer” has cats stalk around the houses of all the main characters throughout.

I longed to ask her what the cats meant but, alas, time is short on these festival press junkets. We spoke instead about the juxtaposition of technology. In the flashbacks woven throughout of events from 20 years prior, it’s all postcards and Nikon cameras. The plot is propelled by a book. Then, in the present, technology supercharges things, and we get pile-on cancellations and catfishing.

Blanchett reflected on this. “When communities were smaller and less global, pieces of information were shared in much slower form, then the notion of people being ostracized took years if not decades to happen or events to come to light.”

Truth itself has become mutable, a major theme of the series. In the past, she said, we had “an understood sense of what was true and what a community believed. Now I think that that has been massively eroded. If you think about Twitter as a platform, I remember talking to journalists about it, saying it was an incredibly important tool for them to get leads to stories. But now those tweets become stories in and of themselves.”

It’s a cliché, she added, “but now the sound bite culture actually prevents information or the truth such as it is from being understood. There are so many different perspectives that go to make up the truth and I think that that is what Alfonso is playing with in the series. There are so many points of view that are brought to bear on the events that the story tells.”

The speed of Ravenscroft’s very modern shunning is supposed to make your head spin. “This thing is all about the rapidity of judgment that the audience is invited to make and that the characters in the story make,” all of which takes place with very little information and with no one really asking questions, Blanchett said. Which is ironic, because Ravenscroft is an investigative journalist.

“There are very few places where I feel that discussions can take place in a nuanced way anymore,” said Blanchett. “These are very complex situations and relationships that exist and yet we talk about them in very simplistic terms,” illuminating another major theme of the series.

Switching gears to talk about her appearance on the TIFF red carpet in support of “Rumours,” Blanchett said she savoured having a punch line about the Treaty of Maastricht in the movie.

“They had me at hello,” she said of Canadian co-directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson. “I’ve long been an admirer of Guy’s chutzpah and his creative invention. The collage artist-cum-filmmaker that he is, he’s got such a fantastic sense of theatre and irreverence, he is intensely soulful and personal.”

The film, which was shot in Winnipeg and Budapest, is an absurdist exploration of a G7 conference. Blanchett plays fictional German chancellor Hilda Ortmann, complete with boxy jacket and a hair flip.

Ortmann tries to wrangle the leaders of the free world at a summit where they are stripped of their communication devices, and abandoned by aids and catering staff as they try to compose a draft statement of agreement. Ortmann at one point tries to get the crew to open up by sharing their biggest regrets. That is before they come upon the giant brain in the forest or the resurrected bog monsters. She also has a romantic moment with the Canadian playboy prime minister, who toggles chaotically between melancholy and swagger.

All that political sound and fury, signifying nothing? “We are living through incredibly, impossibly absurd times,” said Blanchett.

“To say they are purely absurd belies the fact of the contravening of basic human rights around the globe, where it seems very little is being done to stop it and to reach consensus to the betterment of the world as a whole,” she added.

Maybe it isn’t such a stretch after all. “So the fact that these world leaders find themselves beset upon by bog monsters in Bavaria, I mean it does feel very close to a documentary at times.”

“Disclaimer” screens Sept. 9, 11 and 15 at TIFF, and “Rumours” Sept. 9 and 10. Seetiff.netfor information.