Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer Is A Knotty Mystery About ‘How Narratives Can Be Manipulated’

Any time Alfonso Cuarón presents new work, you know it’ll be immersive, immediate, and a sensory experience. The man behind everything from Children Of Men and Gravity, to Roma and Y Tu Mamá También (and, yes, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban) has become one of the most prevalent and defining voices of 21st century cinema. Now, get ready for a different mode of Cuarón – a filmmaker in longform, presenting his incoming Apple TV+ drama Disclaimer. When he read Renée Knight’s 2015 novel of the same name, he knew he wanted to bring it to the screen. But it required a different treatment to his previous work.

“I didn’t know how to put it together as a conventional film, because of the richness of the [characters’] stories and the detail that should be conveyed with each one of them,” Cuarón tells Empire in the Gladiator II issue. Hence, the story – spanning two timelines, in which secrets of the past threaten the future of Cate Blanchett’s journalist Catherine Ravenscroft when they emerge in a freshly-published novel – becoming a seven-part streaming series, written and directed by Cuarón himself.

The series isn’t just a different type of narrative form for the filmmaker – it’s a story about the forming of narratives. “I’m very concerned with how narratives can be manipulated, and how somebody can craft their appearance through narrative to [seem like] a good person,” Cuarón explains. “I think that right now is a very [worrying] period in which that is happening more and more.” Who better to take that on than the powerhouse Cate Blanchett. “It’s insane, the [level of commitment] she took into this,” says the director. “I would receive text messages every weekend and in the evenings after work with specific comments on each part of the script, and specific dialogue that we should study to make everything more meaningful.” How’s this for a disclaimer: once you start watching, you won’t want to stop.

Read Empire’s full Disclaimer story in the Gladiator II issue, on sale Thursday 29 August. Pre-order a copy online here. Disclaimer starts streaming on Apple TV+ from 11 October.