Alfonso Cuarón on how the danger of secrets informs new revenge thriller Disclaimer

The power of truth, narrative, and perspective — and the danger of untold secrets — were top of mind for five-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón as he set out to adapt Renée Knight's 2015 novel, Disclaimer.

The limited series follows acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett), who has built her illustrious reputation by exposing the sins of others. One day, she receives a mysterious book in the mail — ominously bearing the disclaimer "any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence" — that threatens to unravel her whole life when she reads it and realizes she’s the main character in a story that seeks to expose her deepest, darkest secrets.

“Thematically, I was very intrigued about how a narrative completely affects our understanding of facts and understanding of stories,” Cuarón tells Entertainment Weekly. “I mean, from a psychological standpoint, the effect that secrets have — and by secrets, I'm talking about our own past — when we bury away the past, the past finds its way. It finds its way in your personal relationships but also in your own persona and in your own stability. And that applies also not only to the individual, but societies at large.”

Though he was completely taken by those ideas, the acclaimed writer-director, who's spent the majority of his career in film, didn't know how to turn this particular tale into a movie. It wasn't until years later that he realized that a seven-episode limited series would be just the ticket. "I find that in mainstream — generally speaking, it's not the rule — that television is amazing, and probably is what is offering the best writing," Cuarón says. "You could make the case with exceptions, but it is providing some of the best writing. But, it's really, really rare to find a series that has a cinematic value, a cinematic language going on with the whole thing."

And, because of this, once Cuarón finished writing the series, he knew he had to be the one to direct it and bring his cinematic flair to the small screen. Though he's dabbled in TV before, the filmmaker says Disclaimer is his first real foray into the medium, and it definitely was not without its challenges. "Maybe for me it's a bit too late now to learn how to do TV, so if I was going to do it, I was going to do it the way that I would do a film," Cuarón says. "[Apple TV+] was very generous and said, yes, go for it. My miscalculation was that in TV commonly they shoot many pages a day, many minutes a day. I would shoot maybe one page a day. So it was a very, very, very long process that I am certain was also very challenging for the actors because it was so long to be playing with these characters."

In addition to Blanchett's Catherine, those characters also include her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and their son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and grieving parents played by Kevin Kline and Lesley Manville. Louis Partridge, Leila George, and Hoyeon round out the cast, which also features a voiceover by Indira Varma.

The use of different narrators and perspectives is immediately apparent in the series, and is deeply integral to the understanding of the story, says Cuarón. There are four distinct perspectives awaiting viewers: There's one told in first person by Stephen, Kline's character, and how he narrates his story. There's one that is in third person that observes very objectively the world that's outside the main character, Catherine — meaning the world of her son, her husband, her coworkers and so on. Another one, told in the second person by Varma's voiceovers, was inspired by the "accusative" grammar form commonly used in Spanish and French that narrates the story of Catherine, which Cuarón says he was so attracted to due to the fact it "accuses because it has a direct judgment over your subject."

The fourth perspective doesn't have narration at all. Says Cuarón, "That is the one of the novel, that tells us the past, and has a completely different cinematic language."

This past is shot in all golden hues, soft and romantic, and stands in stark contrast to the present-day scenes, which are cold, sharp, and bleak. "The past is warm, and, as it tends to be sometimes, romanticized," explains the director. "And also we wanted to make it a bit heightened. It doesn't follow the more naturalistic rules, the realistic rules of the present narratives."

But, as one such narrator warns in the series' trailer, "Beware of narrative and form, their power can bring us closer to the truth. But because of our own deeply held beliefs and the judgements that we make, they can also be a weapon with a great power to manipulate."

It's with that advice in mind that Cuarón would like the audience to engage with the show and its themes. After all, says Cuarón, "The whole point of Disclaimer is that maybe the most important of all these different perspectives and voices is the one of the spectator, is the one who's viewing the show, and their perspective and their own understanding of the story that they get from what is being shown."

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Disclaimer starts streaming with its first two episodes on Apple TV+ on Oct. 11. Episodes stream weekly thereafter, with the finale dropping Nov. 15.