‘Most moronic invention’: Cate Blanchett and her leaf blower obsession
Cate Blanchett’s disdain for a ubiquitous garden appliance is threatening to overshadow the promotion of her latest movie.
Blanchett, who stars in the new spy thriller Black Bag with Michael Fassbender, deviated from talk about the movie with People magazine this week to launch into a passionate attack on the leaf blower.
“They’re the most moronic invention,” Blanchett ranted when asked about her hate for the tool.
“They’re a symbol of all that is wrong with us as a species.”
Blanchett’s condemnation of leaf blowers has become an unlikely social media meme after outbursts against them of various platforms – from podcasts, magazine interviews, promotional junkets and even the red carpet.
You might like
Her evangelical opposition to leaf blowers dates back to 2007 when she told W Magazine they “sum up everything that is wrong with the human race”.
In 2019, while promoting Where’d You Go, Bernadette, she shifted discussion of her acting methods to describe how she will “fly into, well, I think they’re quite rational, rages – but other people might think they’re irrational – about leaf blowers”.
“If I see a leaf blower, I go from nought to a thousand. I just, I cannot. It’s all that is wrong with the human race,” she said.
As a guest on the popular YouTube series Hot Ones, Blanchett again took aim at her pet hate, telling interviewer Sean Evans that: “Moving leaves from one place to another, only for them to be blown back again. … The gardeners … they know that what they’re doing is stupid.”
Stay informed, daily
During a Cannes press conference for the 2024 film Rumours, an audience member asked Blanchett what makes her laugh. When she brought up leaf blowers, director Evan Johnson uttered, “this again?”.
She even went as far as to film a comedic skit with her Borderlands costar Gina Gershon as a promo for their appearance on US talk show Watch What Happens Live.
Last week, she told interviewer Kareem Rahma on his Subway Takes web series that leaf blowers should be “eradicated from the face of the earth”.
To justify her crusade, Blanchett even referred to a 2011 study that found that the hydrocarbon emissions from half an hour of petrol leaf blowing was equivalent to a long-distance drive in a Ford Raptor ute, which saw the tools banned in Washington DC.
“[They found] that 30 minutes on a leaf blower, this is gonna make you really sick, has more pollution than driving a pickup from Texas to Alaska,” she said.
When People asked if Blanchett was surprised that ubiquitous clips of her sounding off on leaf blowers have gone viral, the two-time Oscar winner said she wasn’t.
“I talk about it all the time,” she said.
“You just got me going about leaf blowers. They’re moronic. I mean, if you see someone with a leaf blower, doesn’t your blood pressure go up?”
She even appeared to enlist Fassbender in her crusade.
“It’s the sound. I wonder when they’re going to come up with a silent leaf blower,” the British actor volunteered, before declaring: “Bring back the rake.”
