Exclusive: Nina Hoss Talks TÁR, Cate Blanchett, and Todd Field

Nina Hoss has been adding gravitas to films and television for 25 years now, ever since her startling debut in And Nobody Weeps For Me. With her deep eyes and passionate yet precise voice, she’s practically haunted the screen in masterpieces like Phoenix and TV series like Homeland. Now, Hoss is starring opposite Cate Blanchett in the wonderful new film TÁR.

While Blanchett has rightfully received a massive amount of praise for the film, Hoss deserves great credit for not just elevating Blanchett’s masterful performance but for holding her own, injecting the artistically cold film with some of its deepest emotions. Hoss plays Sharon Goodnow, the German wife of Blanchett’s Lydia Tár; Lydia is a world-renowned conductor, and Sharon not only shares her bed but her workspace as well, playing first violin (Hoss also learned the violin for the great film The Audition). As the consequences of Lydia’s predatory actions catch up with her, Tár’s world falls apart, and Sharon is caught in the crosshair. Hoss spoke with MovieWeb about the film.

Nina Hoss Plays the Heartbreaking but Complicit Wife of Lydia Tár

Hoss brings a lot of background to Sharon, as if this character has been existing in some other movie for years before crossing over into this one. She seems extremely lived-in, making her relationship with Blanchett’s character all the more believable (and all the more heartbreaking). They raise a daughter, Petra, and obviously share a mutual artistic respect, but there is a distance that Lydia creates between herself and everyone else which always makes Sharon look like she’s alone, even when she’s hugging her wife.

Lydia is a serial groomer of sorts, someone who has been using her power to seduce young women with promises of great things. Sharon is aware of this; she’s not an idiot, but she is in love, something which carries its own sad, beautiful idiocy. She loves Lydia and is in awe of her brilliance, and she seems to hope that Lydia has changed or will despite the obvious cavalcade of lies and manipulations which intrude upon their relationship. Hoss thought a lot about this relationship, considering how it got to the point audiences see in TÁR.

Related: TÁR Review: Cate Blanchett Conducts the Performance of a Lifetime

“You understand very quickly that this is a relationship where one is the person who philanders, and one is at home, feeling that the other person is slipping away,” said Hoss. Yet Sharon persists with the relationship, and some might say she even aids and abets Lydia’s behavior, something which fascinated Hoss. “The complicity, to me, was [in finding out] what is in it for Sharon. For her, the relationship with this incredible musician is bringing her to new heights, it will make her more famous, and take them all over the world. They’re like a power couple.”

TÁR Finds Hoss and Blanchett at the End of Their Love

TÁR takes place years after Sharon and Lydia met (and one wonders if Sharon herself was preyed upon by Lydia at the time), introducing viewers to Tár at the beginning of the end, when everything will come crashing down. The film begins with the worst parts of the global pandemic coming to an end and Tár being able to travel and conduct again, which also allows her more unsavory impulses to be unleashed; in a perhaps less disgusting way, she’s the Harvey Weinstein of classical music.

“I was thinking we don’t see that part of their life,” said Hoss. “They’d also just come out of this pandemic, and that’s part of it. They couldn’t do what they love, and why they love each other, for two years — they couldn’t make music. There’s this image of the empty room with a piano in their house, which isn’t even played by either of them.”

There is something damaged in Sharon and Lydia’s relationship, but Hoss makes Sharon into a much richer character than a mere victim. In her dwells a sadness of having lost something (music and Lydia, perhaps one and the same for Sharon), but also that complicity of keeping it going despite the potential damage that the destructive relationship (and Lydia) may cause.

“I didn’t want to make it too obvious,” said Hoss, of the way she etched in some of the character’s backstory to make things more interesting. “If you want to see it, then you get what Sharon’s doing. There are people around the people that have powerful positions [like Lydia] who just don’t want to do the dirty work, but they make others do it, like her girlfriend, and hide behind them.” As such, Sharon is a pained, beautiful, but complicated character, and a reminder of the systems which enable people like Lydia to do bad things.

Nina Hoss on Cate Blanchett

Almost all of Hoss’ scenes as the second lead of the film are interactions with the first lead, Blanchett, who is already getting massive awards buzz before TÁR is even theatrically released. “I feel huge admiration for the craft that Cate has,” said Hoss, “and the person that she is. She’s incredibly intelligent, a human being with immense intuition, heart, generosity, risk-taking, and all these things I respect so much.”

Acting opposite the force of nature that is Blanchett’s dramatic, dominating performance might be intimidating to some actors, or perhaps a turn-off to someone used to sole stardom in a film. “I am not afraid of that,” laughed Hoss, “I enjoyed it because it doesn’t scare me. I get excited. And I knew the moment we started working together that we could get to something that can make an interesting film, and can start a conversation about so many topics that we’re all thinking about right now.”

Todd Field Brings His Timely Vision to the Timeless TÁR Oct. 7th

That “something” is a very thoughtful, careful, but lucid examination of art, power, and romance in the age of cancel culture, political correctness, and society’s reckoning with systematic issues. TÁR doesn’t tip-toe around the topics (especially in one epic scene where Lydia debates ‘wokeness’ with a young BIPOC student), though it’s never didactic and hardly feels like some ideological polemic. TÁR is an invitation to think about what’s going on right now.

“It’s very timely because it’s what’s surrounding us right now. But it will stay stand the test of time,” said an adamant Hoss, and she’s right — TÁR feels like a timely reflection of contemporary culture but also a timeless depiction of corruption and an evergreen character study for the ages. Much of this is thanks to Todd Field, a director whose 16-year absence from filmmaking didn’t deter Hoss one bit.

“To be honest, I didn’t even think about that,” said Hoss. “These two films that he made [In the Bedroom and Little Children], I can’t even believe it’s just these two, are so prominent, so I wasn’t even thinking about that. I was just noticing that I am dealing with someone who is so precise in everything, he was looking for so much nuance, someone who has done his work and has researched everything […] But he’s so freeing and isn’t clinging to the script, and yet at the same time knows exactly what he’s looking for, and when he’s got it.”

“To be in someone’s vision who is like that, it was just an incredible experience,” concluded Hoss. If Field’s vision created TÁR, then it wasn’t possible without the unobstructed line of sight that Hoss and Blanchett provided. From Standard Film Company and EMJAG Productions, TÁR will be released on October 7th through Focus Features in the United States and through Universal Pictures internationally.