Editor’s note: Deadline’s It Starts on the Page (Limited) features 10 standout limited or anthology series scripts in 2025 Emmy contention.
Disclaimer, Alfonso Cuarón‘s adaptation of the 2015 Renée Knight novel for Apple TV+, offers a sleight of hand throughout nearly the entire course of the limited series — all coming to a head in the finale, where it flips its claustrophobic narrative on its head, all while indicting viewers and their possible ill-informed judgments of its leading woman. The psychological thriller, on its surface, traces the public downfall of prominent journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett), whose worst nightmare comes to fruition when she’s confronted by an pseudonymously written roman à clef that exposes the long-buried secret of her life. Amid a flurry of personal and professional turmoil largely orchestrated by Stephen (Kevin Kline) — an embittered widower who believes Catherine is to blame for the death of his teenage son Jonathan (Louis Partridge) — what appears to be a cut-and-dry tale transforms into a thematic exploration of what happens when women’s voices are hidden and erased.
Cuarón wrote and directed all seven episodes of Disclaimer whose cast also includes Sacha Baron Cohen as Catherine’s husband Robert, Kodi Smit-McPhee as their son Nicholas, and Leila George as younger Catherine.
In the finale, titled simply “Chapter VII,” the truth makes its way to the surface, but not before a taut denouement can unfold, moving with a fury that rivals the waves of the Adriatic Sea, which harbors the real timeline of events Stephen’s presumptuous novel forgoes. After Catherine breaks into Stephen’s home in the concluding moments of the penultimate episode, she relays the details of her encounter with Jonathan, who is not the roguish lover she abandoned and let drown — as his father and mother believed — but rather a predatory man who repeatedly raped and violated her.
Below is the script for “Chapter VII,” which has the apt logline: “It’s time for my voice to be heard.” It is accompanied by an intro by Cuarón, in which he outlines his vision of the sprawling cinematic narrative and its pulse-pounding conclusion for each character and shares how he hopes viewers feel at the end of the episode.
Alfonso Cuarón
Josh Telles/Deadline
As we got closer to the final episode of Disclaimer, I knew we had been asking a lot of the audience. We intentionally gave them a misdirect throughout the whole season and they didn’t know who to trust and I knew the finale was going to ask them to completely rethink everything they thought they knew. The finale was going to make them question all of it.
Each character’s storyline was designed to be captured in a distinctive cinematic language, reflected throughout the screenplay with the use of different colors for each narrative.
We wanted to tell Catherine’s story in a way that didn’t exploit it but also gave her the agency she deserved. Cate and Leila George were incredible. They brought Catherine to life, and their performances were so connected, like they were both channeling this unspoken trauma.
What really stuck with me throughout the story is how it mirrors the way we create protective fictions for ourselves. Stephen’s journey — from thinking he’s doing the right thing to finally confronting the painful truth — was universally relatable. His apology to Catherine in the hospital wasn’t some grand redemptive moment. It wasn’t about fixing things — it was about a man confronting the harsh reality he had been avoiding.
One of the hardest, but also most rewarding parts of the story, is how Catherine and Robert’s relationship doesn’t come together in the end. It’s an honest and real relationship — how sometimes, even people just can’t give them the support they need, no matter how much they
want to.Nicholas learning the truth about his mother’s assault felt like a turning point, bringing everything full circle. This affected so many lives, including Nicholas’s, and they never fully understood how deep it ran until that moment. When Stephen sees that photograph, you can see the truth hit him like a ton of bricks. The lie he’s been living is completely shattered, and it’s heartbreaking to
witness.By the end of the episode, I really hope viewers feel unsettled yet satisfied. I want them to sit with that feeling of uncertainty — that moment when you realize how easily we get caught up in a story, especially when it fits what we want to believe. But even more than that, I want them to understand the cost of ignoring survivors’ voices and signs right in front of you. When we silence them, when we refuse to listen, we’re complicit in keeping those false stories alive.
That’s the heart of Disclaimer — it challenges us to face not just the truth of what happened in that hotel room, but how our desire to avoid discomfort can make us ignore the voices that matter most.
Alfonso Cuarón
Read the script below.
