As an esteemed member of the performing arts community that was seriously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and a person concerned about environmental and humanitarian issues, Blanchett contributed an essay to "Upturn: A better normal after COVID-19", a book published in 2020 about what could be done to improve society after the pandemic in her native Australia.""We engage with the performance of the gesture and the whole of it is greater than the sum of its parts. I think this need to gather is fundamental to who we are, and it has been stymied by Covid-19 but also underlined by it, and that need in us for community addresses the difficult lesson we have to learn: business is not government and government is not a business."" - An excerpt from Blanchett's essay in "Upturn: A better normal after Covid-19."