Blanchett was ultimately cast as her “spirit animal” Spazzatura, a talking monkey whose Italian name translates to “garbage.”
Cate Blanchett was willing to play any character in “Pinocchio” just to work with Guillermo del Toro again.
After collaborating on “Nightmare Alley,” Blanchett begged del Toro for a role in his Netflix stop-motion “Pinocchio” adaptation.
“We were shooting ‘Nightmare Alley.’ Cate Blanchett and I were having such a good time that she said, ‘You’ve got to give me a part on “Pinocchio”,’” del Toro said in a behind-the-scenes video for the feature (via The Independent). “I go, ‘The only part left is a monkey.’”
Blanchett added, “And I went, ‘I would do anything. I would play a pencil in a movie for you.’”
Turns out the “TÁR” star found a certain kind of commonality with the animated character of Spazzatura, the talking monkey whose Italian name translates to “garbage.”
“I think this is my spirit animal,” Blanchett quipped.
Del Toro recently told IndieWire that he opted to not familiarize himself with the other “Pinocchio” iterations as to not taint his vision for the animated film.
“I was told recently that there are over 60 ‘Pinocchio’ movies. I cannot testify to that,” the Oscar winner said. “We tried to studiously avoid them. You have your own ideas and don’t want to create static.”
Del Toro continued, “As Ginger Rogers used to say, ‘I did everything Fred Astaire did, but I did it backwards and in high heels.’ The same thing I can say about stop-motion. We have to execute the same level of precision, realism, but in miniature. We had to do multiple tests to simulate the carving of a piece of wood, and had to reproduce scuff marks and pay close attention to the coloring, staining, worn down areas.”
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