Cate Blanchett came up with the idea for her new Documentary Now! episode

After 52 seasons (give or take) of cinematic excellence, Documentary Now! returns on October 19 with a brand-new season and a brand-new set of high-profile guest stars, including Alexander Skarsgård, Nicholas Braun, Liliane Rovère, Jamie Demetriou, Trystan Gravelle, Jonathan Pryce, John Rhys-Davies, Harriet Walter, and Tom Jones. And one of the season’s guests is a returning player who happened to spearhead her upcoming episode: Cate Blanchett.

Blanchett appeared in the third season parody of Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present as performance artist Izabella Barta. In an interview with Collider, series co-creator Rhys Thomas shares, “Cate Blanchett did Season [3] with us, so she actually brought an idea to us, which was Three Salons By The Seaside. [It] is a BBC, sort of like a 45-minute documentary that she brought to us, and said ‘Take a look at this, this could be good,’ and that was very clearly, very regional, and very British.”

“[When] Cate Blanchett brings an episode to you, it feels like you probably should do it. So that was what definitely pointed us in that direction,” he continues, revealing that all of the new episodes are set in the United Kingdom. “But in terms of the whole season […] it felt exciting to me that it would force us all to think differently, that it would give a different landscape of what we do, and maybe energize the writing and everything.”

Thomas created the series with Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Seth Meyers, but it sounds like Blanchett needs to be given more credit as part of the Doc Now family. (For what it’s worth, the new episode, written by Meyers, also reportedly parodies The September Issue.) If the Oscar winner wants to keep putting out impeccable, pitch-perfect documentary spoofs, her adoring public will be more than happy to accept them.