CULTURE

Cate Blanchett Is Going To Portray Donald Trump's Sister

But the film is not about the Trump family.


Photo: Franco Origlia/Getty Images

Cate Blanchett is known for her exquisitely believable acting; she’s a magnetic presence onscreen, even when she’s playing the particularly loathsome characters like Phyllis Schlafly. Which is why her next role could be fascinating — she’s going to be portraying Donald Trump’s sister in a film that is not about the Trump family.

As Screen Daily reports, Blanchett will appear in Armageddon Times, which was written and going to be directed by James Gray (We Own The Night, Ad Astra). The film is inspired by real events in Gray’s life, as he grew up in Queens, New York and attended Kew-Forest School, a private K-12 academy. Notably, the Trumps are also from Queens — and in real life, Donald’s sister once Maryann Trump Barry gave a speech to the students. This is where Blanchett comes in.

“She’s doing me a favor,” said Gray. “She has a really long speech to deliver, it’s a real scene-stealer,” adding that he “tried to recreate the real speech as best I could from memory.”

Gray understands that at face value, this casting sounds strange. “Cate Blanchett is going to play Donald Trump’s sister, which is the weirdest sentence I have ever said,” he remarked. Her role functions primarily to flesh out the Kew-Forest School setting; indeed, her character is so ancillary that she’ll only be shooting for three days.

So far, Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, and Oscar Isaac are also slated to appear in Armageddon Times. Barry later went on to become a federal judge at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, before retiring in 2019, and her brother Donald Trump is blessedly no longer President of the United States.