Cillian Murphy and Christopher Nolan have a working relationship that dates back to two decades now. First cast as the Scarecrow in Nolan’s seminal, genre-defining Batman Begins, Murphy had originally auditioned for the role of the Dark Knight himself, before landing the part of Jonathan Crane. Since then, he’s popped in and out of Nolan’s movies often, including The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and most recently Dunkirk. Ultimately, the lead role came calling and Nolan cast him as the titular physicist in his Oppenheimer.
In an exclusive feature on Total Film, Murphy talks about receiving the call to play the lead and being taken aback at the opportunity, in a good way of course.
I think any actor in the world would want to work with Chris Nolan, no matter what size the part. And then, our working relationship has developed over 20 years now. I feel really, really lucky that it has. And, yeah, for sure, I was always secretly hoping that he might find a big part for me. And then he just called me in September ’21. He just called me out of the blue, and said, “Here’s the script, and here’s the part. I’d love for you to play it”. That’s the way he operates.
Reflecting upon that moment, Murphy seems grateful for the opportunity and thankful for the sheer amount of time they had to prep for it.
It was huge. And it’s been a while to quite fathom the size of the part, and the size of the possibility. I had a long time to prep.
Murphy was also honest in his assessement of how much he knew about Oppenheimer before the movie. Which, frankly, was not much, but the candor in his admission was refreshing, to say the least.
I think I had kind of Wikipedia-level of knowledge of Oppenheimer, like most people. So then it was… Well, it was just starting from scratch, really. Chris guided me through that. You can only do it one bite at a time. You have to go slowly. And thankfully, we had time.
Nolan on his part was all praise for Murphy. He laid out the monumental difficulty of just what he was expecting Murphy to do, to fully become this person and become a living embodiment of Oppenheimer for 3 full hours (yet again clarifying the film’s runtime). It’s a task that Nolan feels is truly difficult even for seasoned actors. But Murphy came out strong, delivering a performance and revealing nuances that surprised Nolan himself, in terms of how far he took his portrayal of the physicist.
He’s playing a massive swathe of the guy’s life and that presents challenges. I mean, yes, there are physical challenges with that. But more than that, the psychological challenge is trying to absorb an entire life experience of somebody else. Not just a moment in time, but whole periods of his life and to show that to the audience, and to allow the audience to feel that with him. It’s a big challenge I’ve set him. He stepped up to it far beyond what I would have imagined was possible, just in taking you into his head and his experience.
In truth, there are just not that many actors that you could say, on a first-person approach, “Yeah, we’re going to be this guy for three hours”. You’re making a demand of an actor that very few actors in the history of film can rise to. I will say that even with that confidence in him, he was continually surprising me on set every day. And when we got into the edit suite and were putting the performance together, and seeing the truth of it, I was absolutely blown away.
Murphy and Nolan seem to have hit their stride. Theirs is a partnership that has thus far stood the test of time. It remains to be seen what the duo have in store for us in the future.
Oppenheimer releases in theaters on July 21, 2023.
