Over the years, it’s become abundantly clear that the only value Prince William places on the Earthshot Awards is being able to get photo-ops with celebrities. In 2022, he didn’t even invite the prize winners to the ceremony – all of the winners had to Zoom into the show while William gurned and egged his way through the big celebrity meet-up. In 2023, Hannah Waddingham, Lana Condor and Cate Blanchett were tasked with flying to Singapore to stroke William’s ego and pose with the “hot single dad.” In 2024, it was even worse, as William was pretty much exposed for calling up random models like Heidi Klum and asking them to come to South Africa for photo-ops with Peg. Incidentally, I absolutely believe that most (if not all) of the celebrities turning up at Earthshot Prize award ceremonies are getting paid hefty appearance fees.

Well, to hear Cate Blanchett tell it, she’s in it for the love of environmentalism. Cate has absolutely become more interested in environmentalism and sustainable fashion over the years, and I assume that she genuinely believes that Earthshot is an okay program and her support doesn’t come with a price tag. Which is probably why Earthshot people probably begged her to do this dumb interview:

Individuals must not be made to feel burdened with solving climate change alone, Cate Blanchett has said, as she praises the Prince of Wales’s Earthshot Prize. Blanchett, the Oscar-winning actress, said that the “overwhelming nature of the climate challenge can lead to despair, but we don’t have time for apathy and inaction”.

Noting that it is “really important to recognise that many people are struggling” themselves, she told the Telegraph: “Climate can feel like yet another burden to take on – that no one individual can make the changes needed to turn things around. But,” she added, “(and it’s a big but!) collectively, we do have power. Small actions do add up. The way we consume does add up.”

Blanchett, who attended the 2023 awards in Singapore, praised the awards for recognising “innovations that are not only game changing but rapidly scalable… The Prize, I feel, is a real injection of energised hope,” she said.

In an interview with the Telegraph while she was in the UK starring in The Seagull at the Barbican, Blanchett spoke of the “mess” of climate change, and the importance of working together across the globe to find solutions.

”To pit the economy and environment and our humanity against each other is a retreat to the kind of outdated, failed ideological thinking that got us into this mess in the first place, not what’s needed to get us out of it,” she said. “The first lesson that a disaster, a crisis, teaches us, is that everything is connected.”

The Earthshot Prize, she said, “recognises the interwoven nature of the problem – that advances in one corner of the world have ripple effects in others. The interconnected nature of the Prize is part of its power.”

[From The Telegraph]

I honestly don’t have a problem with Cate’s general sentiments, that it’s not about siloed individuals, banging their heads against the wall about the environment. It’s about working together towards shared environmental goals as a society. I can understand how Cate looks at Earthshot like “eh, it’s better than nothing.” But again…William doesn’t even speak about Earthshot this way, nor is he capable of expressing these kinds of sentiments. He’s literally just doing it to hang out with famous people and try to convince everyone that supermodels are dying to hang out with him.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.