CraveOnline: Cinderella’s stepmother is one of the great villains in Disney canon, but what I never really thought about before, and what I saw at least bits of here, was the slow and gradual way in which she basically destroys Cinderella’s personality.
Kenneth Branagh: Yeah.
She turns her into a slave. She’s almost perverse about it.
Yes, it’s abusive. It’s sinister. It’s insidious, and Cate Blanchett was very keen to [do it]. She felt that this cruelty, woman to woman, was something that she was very interested in, appalled by and amazed by, but wasn’t going to stint on.
“[Cate Blanchett] felt that this cruelty, woman to woman, was something that she was very interested in, appalled by and amazed by, but wasn’t going to stint on.”
I think both Chris Weitz [the screenwriter] and she do this scary and spine-tingling job of doing this. She’s unrepentant, unrepentant about what she does, and when she reveals – as she does very beautifully – this account of her own heartbreak, you might call it, she does not appeal for sympathy. It’s a fact. It’s a fact and from which fact things will ensue.
I love the fact [that] she doesn’t even think about smashing that slipper. It’s just, you cross me, it’s gone. She’s formidable. We always wanted that. We wanted to, [and] Cate does a great job of it, give Cinderella really a hell of a problem.
Are you down for Cinderella 2?
You know, literally, this morning is the first time anybody asked this! I had not… I don’t know. I don’t know.
I ask because it was refreshing to see movie that literally ended with the words “The End” for a change. You don’t see that anymore.
[Laughs.]
It was sweet. No franchise. “Screw it, we’re done.”
Certainly no allowance was made in my mind for number two.
Good for you.
But as Martin Scorsese’s great character in that wonderful, underrated masterpiece says, “Things change, Kundun.” [Laughs.]
You are the first person I’ve ever met who quoted Kundun.
I loved it. I loved Kundun. Wonderful score. Philip Glass score.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
