2 Hollywood starlets to take over Cincinnati restaurant for a day of shooting on 'Carol'

Cate Blanchett, seen here, and Rooney Mara have been in the Cincinnati for more than a week to shoot "Carol," a story of two women in 1950s New York who begin a romantic relationship.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Cate Blanchett, seen here, and Rooney Mara have been in the Cincinnati for more than a week to shoot "Carol," a story of two women in 1950s New York who begin a romantic relationship.

CINCINNATI — Two of Hollywood’s hottest stars and the crew of the film they’re shooting soon will take over a Rat Pack-style steakhouse that has been a suburban Cincinnati institution since 1949.

Cate Blanchett, fresh off an Oscar win for best actress, and Rooney Mara have been in the Cincinnati for more than a week to shoot “Carol,” a story of two women in 1950s New York who begin a romantic relationship.

Mara, best known for her breakout and Oscar-nominated role in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” plays a department store clerk who dreams of a more fulfilling life. Blanchett, who just won an Oscar for her performance in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” plays Carol, an alluring woman trapped in a loveless marriage.

The two will be filming a romantic date at Maury’s Tiny Cove in the Cincinnati suburb of Cheviot on April 1, The Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

Maury’s owner Matt Huesman said the restaurant will be closed the entire day for shooting, which will take place in the steakhouse’s “red room,” filled with red and black vinyl booths, wood paneling and dim lighting.

Maury’s has been in the running for months to play a part in “Carol.” Members of the Greater Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky Film Commission scouted the place in October, and several upper echelon staffers from the film’s technical side paid a visit in January.

“The film’s crew members went nuts over the place,” Huesman said as he stood by one of the restaurant’s booths.

He said the crew focused on one particular booth, table 11, which is the first on the left of a small set of steps. That’s where Blanchett and Mara will sit.

“I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be requesting table 11,” Huesman said.

Rooney Mara.

They also may be asking for the “Carol” special.

In the movie’s restaurant scene, both Blanchett’s and Mara’s characters order the same thing: creamed spinach over poached eggs and dry martinis with olives.

Huesman said Maury’s was nearly going to be the site of a restaurant scene in the other major motion picture recently filmed in Cincinnati, the 2011 political drama “Ides of March,” starring George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood.

But Huesman said that film’s crew thought Maury’s ceilings were too low. The crew of “Carol” clearly thinks otherwise.

Also starring in “Carol” will be Sarah Paulson, who was in the Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave” and is known for TV’s “American Horror Story: Coven.” She will play Carol’s best friend and one-time lover.

Actor Kyle Chandler will play Carol’s husband, who threatens his wife’s competence as a mother because of her previous affair with Paulson’s character and new relationship with Mara’s. Chandler was the football coach in TV’s “Friday Night Lights” and has played in a number of recent acclaimed films, including “The Wolf of Wall Street,” ‘’Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”

No release date has been announced for “Carol.”