Cate Blanchett Asks London Audience to Stop Filming Her Play — SkimNews
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- Cate Blanchett paused the atmosphere at the National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre to ask audience members to stop recording her performance in 'Electra/Persona,' saying filming 'spoils it for the next group of people' who come to see the show
- 'Electra/Persona' runs through Oct. 10 at the Lyttelton Theatre, combining Sophocles' 'Electra' with Ingmar Bergman's 'Persona' in a production written and directed by Benedict Andrews
- Blanchett and Nina Hoss alternate between the dual roles of Electra/Elisabeth and Clytemnestra/Alma each night, with the night's casting determined by a coin toss
- Blanchett said at the 2025 Rotterdam Film Festival she 'never, ever' thought she could work in film, describing Hollywood as having a 'shelf life' for women of a certain type
Why it matters: An A-list star publicly broke from her own performance to police audience behavior, framing phone recording as a violation of shared presence rather than a copyright issue. The play's coin-toss casting means each night's configuration is genuinely unrepeatable — which sharpens her argument that filming robs later audiences of something they'll never see again.
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