Christopher Nolan genuinely apologised to Florence Pugh for the extent of her role in Oppenheimer, according to Florence Pugh.
The filmmaker fully anticipated her to decline the part of Jean Tatlock, a Communist Party member and psychiatrist who is also the romantic interest of Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy).
Pugh, 27, featured in only a few scenes, with her two main ones containing a lot of nudity on her part – whereas co-star Murphy, 47, was largely covered up.
The Don’t Worry, Darling actor, on the other hand, acknowledged she wouldn’t mind playing an extra preparing coffee in the filmmaker’s epic historical picture about the so-called “Father of the Atomic Bomb.”
‘I didn’t really know what was going on or what it was that was being made – except I knew that Chris really, really wanted me to know that it wasn’t a very big role, and he understands if I don’t want to come near it,’ she recalled.
‘And I was like, “It doesn’t matter. Even if I’m a coffee maker in a café at the back of the room, let’s do it.”’
She added to MTV UK: ‘I remember he apologised for the size of the role. I was like, “Please don’t apologise.”
‘And then he said, “We’ll send you the script, and honestly, you just read it and decide if it’s like… I completely understand the sizing thing.”’
However, the actress also remembered thinking as she read the script “I know I’m going to do it”.
Murphy previously praised his co-star for making their sex scenes’so f***ing powerful,’ as well as her ‘devastating influence’ on the film.
Oppenheimer has extended full nudity as well as two sex scenes with the titular physicist and his lover Jean.
He told The Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Those scenes were written deliberately.
‘[Christopher Nolan] knew that those scenes would get the movie the rating that it got. And I think when you see it, it’s so f***ing powerful. And they’re not gratuitous. They’re perfect. And Florence is just amazing.’
The Peaky Blinders star went on to hail Florence’s acting as ‘f***ing phenomenal’.
He also said he had ‘loved Florence’s work since Lady Macbeth’, a 2016 period drama she worked on.
‘She has this presence as a person and on-screen that is staggering,’ the Irish actor said.
Although the sex scenes were deemed inappropriate by certain censors in places like as India, where Pugh was given a CGI black garment to cover her body so the picture could be released, director Christopher Nolan defended them.
Nolan characterised them as crucial because of Oppenheimer’s ‘very intense relationship’ with Jean and his ‘way with women’. They are the first films he has directed in his career, which includes Inception and the Dark Knight trilogy.
He explained to Insider: ‘Well, when you look at Oppenheimer’s life and you look at his story, that aspect of his life, the aspect of his sexuality, his way with women, the charm that he exuded, it’s an essential part of his story.’
The 53-year-old called their relationship ‘one of the most important things in his life’, especially considering the fact that Tatlock ‘was very explicitly a Communist’, meaning it had ‘enormous ramifications for his later life and his ultimate fate’.
‘So it felt very important to understand their relationship and to really see inside it and understand what made it tick without being coy or allusive about it, but to try to be intimate, to try and be in there with him and fully understand the relationship that was so important to him.’
Oppenheimer is in cinemas now.
