Here's what really went down behind the making of 'Oppenheimer,' according to Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. What is it really like on a Christopher Nolan set? Did Cillian really say yes before reading the script? From pre-production to the release of the film, the cast talk about their favorite on-screen moments and their relationship with director Christopher Nolan.Directors: Claire Buss and Noël JeanDirector of Photography: AJ YoungEditor: Cory Stevens; Christopher JonesFeaturing: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr.Interviewer: Anthony BreznicanCoordinating Producer: Sydney MaloneProduction Managers: Andressa Pelachi, Peter BrunetteTalent Booker: Lauren MendozaCamera Operator: Jon CorumGaffer: Oliver LukacsSound Mixer: Paul CornettProduction Assistant: Fernando Barajas, Shenelle JonesPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Scout AlterSupervising Editor: Erica DeLeoAssistant Editor: Billy WardGraphics Supervisor: Ross RackinFilmed on Location at: The London West Hollywood at Beverly Hills
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 By the way, Matt Damon is generally included in the homies,
00:04 but I think he's shooting a Dunkin' Donuts commercial right now.
00:07 Hi, Vanity Fair. I'm Emily Blunt.
00:14 Hello, Vanity Fair. I'm Cillian Murphy.
00:16 I'm Robert Downey Jr., and we're going to give you the entire
00:21 oral history of the cinematic masterpiece Oppenheimer.
00:28 Chris, he generally tends to just call me out of the blue, or Emma, Thomas' wife and producer,
00:36 calls me because Chris doesn't possess a phone or a computer or an email.
00:40 What he always does, though, I think that people know this now, is that he flies
00:44 to wherever you are and gives you the actual script himself in person, and it's always printed
00:51 on red paper with black ink, and it's like it was a tome. It was a doorstopper of a thing.
00:56 In the Marvel days, everything was watermarked, and they had dummy scripts and phony things.
01:00 Do you remember all those days to keep you from it? And then Chris is just like,
01:03 "I want to just make this impossible for anyone to ever read except the people I'm asking to read it."
01:09 Yeah.
01:09 By the way, it's so hard to read a script on red paper with black type. I suggest any of you try
01:14 it.
01:14 So private in a lovely way. It's just the coolest. Just usually everything, you know,
01:20 everyone's in the know, and your agents and your team, and you know all the producers know,
01:25 and you know you're being discussed by people. There's sort of the chatter and the noise around
01:30 putting a project together, and this feels really distinctive and calm and private and peaceful.
01:37 And reasonable.
01:38 Yeah.
01:39 Yeah, and the thing I should say as well is that every time Chris has called me,
01:42 I've always said yes before I've read the script. So it's just a formality reading the script.
01:47 You know, when we discuss it on the phone, I knew it was a huge part.
01:52 I've always said this, I need to feel intimidated by work. It needs to feel dangerous or
01:56 impossible for me. If it feels like I know how to play that, I'm not really interested.
02:01 It needs to feel like a huge leap, and this was one of the biggest leaps.
02:05 It's a sort of wild combination of like abandonment working with him,
02:08 and also knowing that you're going to have the screws tightened on you as an actor
02:12 to such a degree that it becomes one of the most thrilling experiences of your life.
02:18 We had a long prep period, like we had six months. I was going from the outside
02:22 in, which was trying to get the physicality and trying to get the walk and the voice and all of
02:25 that. And then there was an interior thing going on, which was all this sort of research and this
02:29 sort of, I suppose, the intellectual sort of side of it.
02:32 What was the thing Chris told you about David Bowie?
02:35 That was just some little thing. He just dropped in the mix at one point. He sent me a picture of
02:40 him, I think it was during the Thin White Duke era, you know, and he was so cool, but so slim.
02:45 And he had those beautiful high-waisted pleated tailored trousers, and he had the coat and the
02:50 jacket and the hat. And it was just, because Bowie is always creating his own iconography and his own
02:57 aura. Do you know what I mean?
03:00 And he struggled to figure out how is he going to break in? He felt very much like an outsider.
03:05 Yes.
03:06 And he went from the outside in, and then the inside could do it.
03:10 Totally. And I think that's probably where there was some sort of crossover. It doesn't seem
03:14 logical or obvious in any way. He began to find himself and design his own sort of aura.
03:21 And you see it in the movie, you know, when we do that little montage,
03:24 he puts the hat in the pipe and he just becomes this character.
03:27 You want to talk about a story where the stakes are high. The stakes are the future of
03:32 Western civilization. And so a lot of my prep was just recognizing that all these people are
03:37 taking place in a story where the fate of humanity rested on the decisions they made.
03:43 So when there's these complicated relationships, I'm reading the script and I'm going, "Man,
03:47 their marriage has to work broken as it is because we won't survive." It was just all that stuff.
03:52 So it was so implicit in his writing.
03:54 It's always a bit scary. Like I remember the first time we read a scene in front of him.
03:58 I was so scared because we both decided to do quite a specific voice for them.
04:04 I remember finishing the scene and went, "Yeah, great. Okay." And that was it. And you're like,
04:09 "Oh, thank God." That means I think he really likes it.
04:12 - I think every single crew member, every single actor wants to be on a Chris Nolan set. We were
04:19 discussing this. It's a little bit of a letdown when you go onto another set. No disrespect to
04:24 every director in the world, but that efficiency, that real rigorous efficiency that happens.
04:31 And like Robert was saying, there's a lot of wasted time, wasted money that surrounds our
04:37 industry. Like everybody knows that it's a legendary, legendary. So, but with Chris, it isn't.
04:43 And you just go straight to the work. And I think the reason he re-collaborates a lot with people
04:47 is that he likes to do that thing where it's just the work.
04:49 - There are all these legends about what it's like on a Christopher Nolan set. And you've hinted
04:53 at some of them, like lack of chairs. Is that a real thing?
04:55 - I mean, there's an Apple box around now.
04:57 - Occasionally there's an Apple box.
04:58 - Just pock your booty on an Apple box.
05:00 - Human resources are scarce. And the idea is that this is a Spartan endeavor. And also I think that
05:09 Chris, from all the films he's done, he deplores waste. He is a conservationist of the highest
05:16 order.
05:16 - I like that all this stuff is, this kind of convention has developed around film sets that
05:20 is kind of crackers, like that people are on their phone. Why would you be on your phone?
05:24 - Yep.
05:24 - On a film set doesn't make any sense. There's no video village. There's no monitors. All of
05:28 these things that just are the norm now. But why do we need them? If the director knows exactly
05:32 what he or she...
05:32 - It's what Matt said. Not everything's happening in front of the camera. Everything is happening
05:38 in front of the camera. There is no budget for anything that's not happening in front of the
05:42 camera. So the other thing is, if I see Chris Nolan, I throw my phone. And this is a neighbor
05:48 who's not shooting.
05:49 - Still to this day.
05:50 - Yes. If you see him, just put your phone down. And he doesn't even really like it when you go to
05:55 the bathroom, but he understands you have to.
05:57 - Yeah.
05:57 - And I asked him, "Dude, when do you go?" And he goes, "11 a.m. and 6 p.m."
06:02 - And I was like, "Are you fucking with me?"
06:06 - And he drinks so much tea.
06:08 - I know, but it's not a diuretic tea.
06:11 - No, it's not.
06:12 - Because he won't do anything. He won't ask anyone to do anything that he's not
06:17 a thousand percent willing to do himself twice as hard.
06:21 - That's it. I remember we were doing a scene on Dunkirk. Do you remember that scene where
06:24 my character is found on the bow of this sunken vessel?
06:28 - Oh, yeah.
06:28 - I remember all the marine guys and all the stunt guys were very unsure about me getting up.
06:33 It was very kind of bad weather. And Chris was like, "Okay, I'll get up there." So he got up
06:38 there, did it all, and they checked it out with him doing it. And then he was like, "Okay,
06:42 put Killian up there then." That's just one example. There's so many of them.
06:45 - I love our scene where you find me.
06:48 - Yes.
06:48 - By the rocks, yeah.
06:49 - Yeah.
06:50 - You pulled yourself together.
06:54 - People here depend on you.
07:00 - That scene-
07:01 - It's also because we kind of knew we were losing the light. It was just that
07:06 sort of simmer of tension on set where you're like, "Ooh," and you see it was just-
07:10 - We shot it so fast.
07:11 - So fast.
07:12 - Yeah.
07:12 - And Chris wants to keep that at bay, but you could kind of feel it.
07:16 - Yeah.
07:16 - Just sort of, we needed to get it. He'd already shot five scenes before it.
07:21 - But the way it's important for me or significant for me is I suppose I knew
07:27 that we had to get to a place in that scene just emotionally for the story, for their
07:31 story together to work particularly.
07:32 - To ratchet it up so intensely and so fast.
07:35 - But I could not have done it with anybody else other than Emily. There is no way that
07:40 I could have got to that place without you in that scene. And to be able to lock into that-
07:44 - Because I slapped the shit out of you.
07:45 - And he cut it out.
07:46 - Exactly.
07:48 - He cut it out. But it was just one of those scenes where you need to have that level of
07:54 trust with the actor you're working with and with the director. You can go straight to it.
07:58 - There's a scene after he doesn't get his appointment.
08:02 - Oh, it's my favorite.
08:04 - I'm denied. Yeah. I'm afraid so, sir.
08:07 - All right.
08:08 - All the veneer has to come down. You have to see who's kind of been running the show
08:14 the whole time. And I'm there and it's me and Alden and Scott Grimes. We blocked it.
08:19 And then it kind of made more sense and he gave me a little more room. And then we did,
08:22 we did, we did. And I thought I had it. And I was like, all right, now I'm getting tired.
08:26 I think we had it. And he goes, "We may have it. We may not. But
08:29 now I know I may have got something else in you." And I was like-
08:37 - Yeah.
08:37 - No, you don't. And I don't.
08:40 - Oh my gosh.
08:41 - And I was like, "Oh." Anyway, it was one of those things where he was like, "I'm sorry,
08:45 but we didn't come this far for me to let you off the hook. Even if there's nothing left to find,
08:50 we still have time. I'm not rushing. And by the way, I'm not trying to shoot tomorrow today. I'm
08:55 just trying to shoot today, today. So you're fucked until we're done."
08:59 - Until you bring it.
09:00 - No, it was great. And I feel like it was a big moment of like, I have to break through
09:05 this inherent, whatever our own lazy meter is, it's in there somewhere. And that's the thing you
09:11 have to find and erase to grow.
09:13 - That scene is-
09:15 - Stop my heart.
09:16 - Masterful.
09:16 - Stop my heart.
09:17 - It feels more like a celebration of the work.
09:23 - Yeah.
09:23 - You know, then, you know, when you're promoting something, it's a three hour R-rated picture about
09:28 a physicist, you know, then this phenomenon happens and it connects with audiences in a way
09:35 that we could never, ever, ever have anticipated.
09:38 - The film kind of went out there and had it went into its adolescence and its own maturity.
09:44 And we just had to kind of just reconnect with each other. So, you know, we're trying to hook up
09:49 or FaceTime. I was going to have to see you and crash at your pad. We just kind of like tried to
09:54 socially reintegrate.
09:57 - I've heard this.
09:58 - And then somebody would like drink again in the Cotswolds in England.
10:01 - Yeah, baby.
10:02 - I love an indulgent set. I love choppering into a Avengers back lot. I just think it's great.
10:08 I love the whole conspicuous consumption, but the Chris Nolan way is not for the faint of heart.
10:15 - Yeah.
10:15 - So it's nice because you wind up knowing what you're made of when you're done working for him.
10:20 - Yeah.
10:21 - We like making dad proud.
10:22 - Yeah.
10:23 - Best dad ever.
10:26 - Thanks for watching. If you haven't seen Oppenheimer twice,
10:31 go see it again. You're going to love it. Thanks, Vanity Fair.
10:35 - Thank you.
10:35 - Nice one. Wow. That was quite a set.
10:42 - Yeah, man.