Leila George on the Magical Dream of Making Disclaimer

In T-minus two hours, Leila George is leaving for the airport. Destination: Venice, Italy. As we jump onto a Zoom call with the actress, she is noticeably excited but also a ball of nerves. The trip represents some big firsts for the Australian: her first time attending the illustrious Venice Film Festival, her first time watching her new Apple TV+ series Disclaimer with an audience, and her first big and prestigious red carpet. The anticipation is at an all-time high.

The premiere went off without a hitch. Styled by Kate Young, George wore two stunning looks—a diamond-encrusted Dior gown and a plunging Alessandra Rich number, both accompanied by Chopard jewels. The show received a raucous six-minute standing ovation.

Disclaimer is, without a doubt, one of the year’s most anticipated shows. Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón is at the helm making his television debut, and Cate Blanchett stars in the gripping seven-parter. Based on the book of the same name by Renée Knight, the thriller follows well-respected documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft as she discovers she is the prominent character of a new book that threatens to expose her deepest, darkest secret. As the events of a tragic encounter come to light, Catherine’s life and career are at stake, and the lines between fact and fiction become blurred.

Cuarón, Blanchett, Apple TV+—it’s a project any actor would dream of being a part of, so when George got the call to meet with the famed director, it didn’t seem real at first. Almost two years to the date of our conversation, George heard from her London agent that Cuarón wanted to speak with her the next day about a project he was working on. “This was one of those mythical, legendary things you hear about in the industry, where someone just gets a phone call out of the blue, and you don’t ever think that’s going to happen. You’ve heard rumors that things like this exist, but until it happens to you, you don’t quite believe that that’s ever possible,” the actress tells us. Wanting to make a great impression, she immediately bought the book and read it overnight. She thought knowing the material would earn her brownie points with Cuarón. “He was like, ‘No, you cheated!'” she laughs. He offered her the role of young Catherine on the spot.

Three days later, George was on a plane to London. She packed up her entire life—knowing in some respects she would be leaving Los Angeles for good—and didn’t look back.

George had an exciting challenge ahead of her. Up to this point, she had played a post-apocalyptic socialite in Mortal Engines, a woman on the run in the American Western The Kid, and a young Janine “Smurf” Cody in Animal Kingdom. But Catherine was unlike any character George had taken on before. “I’ve played a lot of strong female characters, but one who does it in such a seductive way was really fun to me,” she says.

Without giving too much away ahead of the show’s October 11 premiere, there are two versions of Catherine’s hidden story, which takes place on an Italian holiday: the perspective of a grieving mother looking to piece together her son’s accidental death and the real one. This juxtaposition was another interesting challenge for George. While a young Catherine—selfish and manipulative in her actions—is easy to dislike at first, George experienced it the other way around. While reading the book and the script, even while filming, she was always sympathetic to Catherine, finding reasons behind everything she did. It wasn’t until watching the show later on that George saw what everyone else was seeing. “I was like, ‘Gosh, she is awful.’ But I didn’t know that when I was playing her.” she says. “It was wild to really watch the show and for the first time see the evil in it.”