By the end of his career, Stanley Kubrick was firmly entrenched in his home in Hertfordshire, to the point where he refused to leave England for anything - not even to make a film. The director moved to England in 1961 to film Lolita at Elstree Studios, and basically stayed after that, eventually buying the now-famous Childickbury Manor in 1978 and staying there until his death in 1999.

The legendary filmmaker's decision to stay in England was at least partly motivated by his distaste for Hollywood studios and his desire to create without interference. Which is all well and good, and the films that came out during the director's post-American era speak for themselves. But it sometimes created some frankly absurd scenarios, such as when his last film, Eyes Wide Shut took Kubrick's grueling methods to a new level. To be specific, Kubrick set out to make a film in which Tom Cruise embarks on a nocturnal odyssey through the various neighborhoods of New York, but the director wanted to shoot the whole thing at Pinewood Studios in England. The result was meticulously recreated New York streets made to match the proportions of the city. How did Kubrick manage to create such realistic fabrications? He sent a team to measure the streets of New York, of course.

When Eyes Wide Shut debuted, that attention to detail at least made for a film that betrayed none of its skill. Dr. treadmill versus a rear projection of the actual New York footage for most of the film.

Interestingly enough, Kubrick's refusal to leave the UK also led to an unexpected dubbing that eventually saw Cate Blanchett's early-career cameo in the film - although her involvement was kept secret for two decades.

By far the most memorable visual contribution Eyes Wide Shut made to our cultural lexicon is the orgy scene, which took a lot of research and which has since become shorthand for the secret societies of the elite. After Dr. Bill learns of his wife's infidelity, he stumbles across New York on a road trip that may or may not see him dealing with his own one-night stand, only for him to end up in the mysterious hall where she's gathered the New York elite. , their faces hidden behind masks inspired by the Italian tradition of Commedia dell'arte. While there, Bill encounters a masked woman who says, "I don't know who you are or what you think you're doing, but you clearly don't belong here." She then warns him to leave while he still has the chance.

In VultureIn an oral history of the 2019 orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut, actor and longtime Stanley Kubrick assistant Leon Vitali revealed that the voice at this point was actually Cate Blanchett's. Although the lines were delivered on set by British actress Abigail Goode, they were later reworked by Blanchett after Cruise and his then-wife and co-star Nicole Kidman suggested it to her. "It was Cate Blanchett!" Vitali told Vulture. "We wanted something warm and sensual, but at the same time it could be part of a ritual."

When Kubrick died on March 7, 1999, post-production on the film was still unfinished, and Vitali was left to find a suitable voice to adapt Goode's lines. After all, Cruise was supposed to be in New York, so using a British actor for this brief but important interaction was not ideal. Vitali continued:

“Stanley talked about finding this voice and this quality that we needed. After he died I was looking for someone. Actually Tom (Cruise) and Nicole (Kidman) came up with the idea for Kate. "She was in England at the time, so she went into Pinewood and recorded the lines."

By the time she made her unremarked Eyes Wide Shut cameo, Cate Blanchett's star was well and truly on the rise. In 1997, she gave her breakthrough performance in Oscar and Lucinda, before starring as Queen Elizabeth I and earning her first Academy Award nomination for 1998's Elizabeth. So when she happened to be in England while Leon Vitali was looking for someone to deliver Abigail Good's lines, why not use her - especially if she was recommended by Cruise and Kidman?

Perhaps the only reason Blanchett wasn't used to read lines with an American accent was because she's an Australian actress. In that sense, it would certainly have been easier for Goode to just improvise an American accent on set, but neither Kubrick nor Vitali seem to have thought that far ahead. Either that or the director was toying with the idea of ​​keeping Goode's line intact. He had already demonstrated some insecurity when it came to the film itself, so the orgy scene was heavily delayed while he made creative decisions. damn it Kubrick even came close to casting Steve Martin as the lead in Eyes Wide Shut. so he probably wasn't thinking about Goode's line when they shot her scene.

Meanwhile, Goode told Vulture that she always wondered whether or not her reading would make the final cut, but she didn't seem at all disappointed that it didn't. As she told the outlet:

"When all the other girls left, I was in this amazing position of being able to work with two amazing artists. I was on set with Tom and Stanley, we were finding things on our own. Stanley asked my opinion a lot. Me and Tom were among the last people to he recorded them."