'Oppenheimer' star Cillian Murphy answers twelve questions about the Christopher Nolan Oscar-nominated film for his March GQ cover. How did he feel about J. Robert Oppenheimer before and after stepping into his role? What was it like filming in Oppenheimer's actual Los Alamos home? How has his relationship with Christopher Nolan evolved since Batman, Inception and Dunkirk?Director: Kristen DeVoreDirector of Photography: AJ YoungEditor: Robby MasseyGuest: Cillian MurphyProducer: Sam DennisLine Producer: Jen SantosProduction Manager: Andressa PelachiProduction Equipment Manager: Kevin BalashTalent Booker: Dana MathewsCamera Operator: Osiris LarkinSound Mixer: Kari BarberProduction Assistant: Liza Antonova; Brock SpitaelsPost Production Supervisor: Rachael KnightPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Rob LombardiAssistant Editor: Billy Ward
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00:00 I never particularly know how I'm going to play a scene.
00:02 It's like us as human beings.
00:04 We don't know when we walk into a room how we're going to react.
00:07 We just react to the moment.
00:08 So that's what you try and do as an actor.
00:10 Well, certainly what I try and do.
00:11 Hello, GQ, this is Cillian Murphy,
00:16 and I am going to answer some questions about Oppenheimer.
00:19 In a previous GQ interview, you said you felt like you weren't Bruce Wayne material.
00:25 Did you feel that way with Oppenheimer?
00:28 Yeah, I certainly wasn't Bruce Wayne material, I don't think.
00:31 Maybe I could have played Bruce Wayne, but maybe not Batman.
00:34 But that's a different story.
00:37 I always feel about parts that if it's easy or that I can do it,
00:42 then I don't really want to do it.
00:44 It has to feel like a challenge. It has to feel impossible.
00:47 It has to feel like a huge undertaking.
00:49 And certainly with Oppenheimer, he is this iconic 20th century figure.
00:52 And we are all living in a world that Oppenheimer created.
00:55 So it was huge, huge part.
00:57 And I recognized the scale of it.
00:59 But that's that's what you want as an actor.
01:01 That's what you want. You want to be pushed.
01:03 You want to be challenged.
01:05 And so it was a huge challenge, but one that I embraced.
01:09 What was your favorite piece of your Oppenheimer wardrobe?
01:12 I mean, I should say the hat, shouldn't I?
01:15 But I didn't keep any of it.
01:17 Hated the pipe.
01:18 It took me a long time to figure out the pipe.
01:20 Even though that's probably technically a prop.
01:22 I loved the suits.
01:23 I love the tailoring of the suits.
01:25 I love those high-waisted pleated pants.
01:27 They're very flattering, I think, to men.
01:29 But nobody wears them anymore.
01:31 Bring them back, I say.
01:33 How did you feel about J.
01:34 Robert Oppenheimer before you started?
01:36 And how did you feel when you finished the role?
01:38 I've been asked this question a lot.
01:40 And the only answer that I can give that I think makes any sense
01:45 is that I felt that he was intensely human.
01:47 And I felt that despite his sort of one in a million
01:51 generational genius that he had, that he was still as flawed
01:56 and as contradictory and as fallible as the rest of us are as human beings.
02:01 You know, his brilliance,
02:04 I treated it less like a gift and more like a burden
02:07 in order to play the humanity of him.
02:09 They won't fear it until they understand it.
02:11 And they won't understand it until they've used it.
02:14 When the world learns the terrible secret of Los Alamos,
02:18 our work here will ensure a peace mankind has never seen.
02:21 And the other thing is I don't really go into projects
02:24 to try and learn about characters.
02:26 I try to understand them.
02:27 I never particularly know how I'm going to play a scene
02:29 before I get into it.
02:31 I mean, I'll know the lines, but you know, like,
02:33 it's like us as human beings.
02:34 We don't know when we walk into a room how we're going to adjust
02:37 to the changing dynamics.
02:40 We just react to the moment.
02:41 So that's what you try and do as an actor.
02:43 It's certainly what I try and do.
02:44 Is it true you were only eating almonds for dinner during film?
02:48 No, this is apocryphal.
02:49 I think Emily was being very sympathetic to me
02:53 and said Achillean only had one almond a day.
02:55 I mean, I had a bit more than that.
02:57 I didn't really have enough room in my brain
02:58 to be socializing with the rest of the cast and crew
03:01 at that time because it's so much work to do.
03:03 And, you know, I was kind of reducing calories
03:06 and all that stuff.
03:06 So it's just, I didn't go out for dinner or any of that stuff,
03:10 but I had more than one almond a day, for sure.
03:12 I wouldn't recommend anyone exist on an almond a day.
03:15 What was it like shooting in Oppenheimer's
03:18 actual Los Alamos house?
03:19 That was amazing.
03:20 The whole film was shot on location.
03:24 There was only one studio build, I think, in the whole shoot.
03:27 And many of the locations were the actual locations
03:31 where the events went down historically.
03:33 I remember myself and Emily Blunt walked into it
03:36 and you can feel there's an energy in the room.
03:39 There's some vibrations molecularly in that space
03:44 that you feel, that you know that these actual people
03:46 have lived there.
03:48 And it certainly adds something to your performance.
03:50 It can't help but do that.
03:52 And we shot in Berkeley on the campus
03:54 where he would have taught.
03:55 And Chris always has tried to do that.
03:57 That scene after the bomb is dropped in Japan,
04:01 he tries to give that speech.
04:02 That was shot in Los Alamos in Fuller Lodge,
04:06 where the scientists used to gather.
04:08 Again, you feel these waves of energy,
04:11 these kind of resonances.
04:13 And I think it adds something to a performance.
04:16 I can't put my finger on what it is,
04:17 but I believe energetically it does change the actors
04:21 and the crew and everybody feels the significance
04:24 of the import of what we're doing.
04:26 How has your working relationship
04:28 with Christopher Nolan evolved since Batman Begins
04:30 through Inception and Dunkirk to Oppenheimer?
04:32 Well, I remember when we first started working,
04:34 we had no kids and now he has four and I have two.
04:36 So that's one thing that's changed and evolved.
04:39 His vision has become more refined.
04:42 I think he really, really knows very clearly
04:44 the sorts of stories that he wants to tell.
04:46 The way he tells the stories in terms of how he presents them
04:49 in terms of the IMAX format,
04:51 I think has been refined and honed
04:55 and is unlike any other filmmaker on the planet.
04:57 I think our relationship has deepened.
04:59 Now, I think anytime you recollaborate
05:01 with someone that many times,
05:02 which has been six times over 20 years,
05:04 I think you develop this shorthand
05:07 that becomes almost like telepathy.
05:10 We can understand what needs to happen in a scene
05:13 without talking that much.
05:14 And that's why people recollaborate, I think,
05:17 because of that, because you can just cut through
05:19 all the getting to know you, testing the waters,
05:22 and just go straight to the work.
05:24 Sometimes the themes and the scenes are so large
05:27 in what you're trying to tackle,
05:29 like particularly on Oppenheimer,
05:30 because it was the greatest moral dilemmas
05:32 that a human being could possibly
05:34 sort of begin to wrestle with or undertake.
05:37 I mean, they thought when they were going
05:39 to test the bomb, there was a chance
05:42 they were gonna vaporize the world.
05:44 So, you know, you don't really have to discuss that.
05:47 - Neutrons smash into nucleus,
05:49 releasing neutrons to smash into other nuclei.
05:52 Criticality, point of no return,
05:55 massive explosive force.
05:57 But this time, the chain reaction doesn't stop.
05:59 It would ignite the atmosphere.
06:02 - He and I have a similar taste in terms of performance.
06:08 And I knew from the beginning
06:09 that the performance would have to be quite interior.
06:11 And I think he understood that too.
06:13 And he was shooting on these large form of cameras,
06:15 which meant that he was treating the face
06:17 kind of as a landscape,
06:18 which he hadn't done before with them.
06:20 So I knew that I could have this interiority
06:22 with the performance.
06:24 And he trusted me with that.
06:26 So you said before that Christopher Nolan
06:28 makes big films feel like small films.
06:31 Does that apply to Oppenheimer?
06:32 Did I say that?
06:33 You know, he makes films about human beings,
06:38 but he's interested in big, big themes.
06:41 Makes them on a big scale.
06:44 But when you're shooting them,
06:45 it certainly feels like an independent film
06:49 because there's just Chris,
06:51 there's just one camera,
06:53 there's a boom mop,
06:54 and there's the actors,
06:55 there's no video village.
06:57 There's none of the sort of trappings
06:59 of conventional studio huge movie that you normally expect.
07:03 So it feels very intimate.
07:04 - So even when you're filming with the IMAX in your face,
07:07 how did you get through?
07:08 - Well, I've been working with Chris for so long now,
07:10 I'm kind of used to them.
07:12 It's not really a big deal.
07:13 And the only thing about them
07:14 is they make a tremendous racket,
07:16 but then we do a sound take afterwards.
07:18 So, you know, you get used to the environment.
07:20 It feels like a laboratory
07:22 when you're working with Chris Nolan.
07:23 Because you're free to experiment and try
07:25 and make a fool of yourself.
07:27 And he loves actors.
07:28 He's incredibly curious about actors.
07:30 So it feels, it always feels like a very small,
07:33 private, safe environment.
07:36 - What was the most difficult scene for you to shoot?
07:39 - It was all a challenge.
07:40 I really liked the hearing scene at the end,
07:43 which cuts backwards and forwards
07:45 to when they're trying to take away his security clearance
07:48 and they're just humiliating him
07:49 in this tiny, shitty, awful little bureaucratic room.
07:52 And we shot it in the room just like that.
07:54 And we had the whole crew in there and the IMAX camera.
07:56 And to me, it felt like my days in theater
07:59 where, you know, it was just this company of actors,
08:01 this troop of actors,
08:02 and we would just go at it day after day.
08:04 And there were these long, long dialogue scenes
08:06 and this huge kind of one-on-ones, a tĂȘte-Ă -tĂȘtes
08:09 with Jason Clarke.
08:10 And then, you know, Emily Blunt would come in
08:12 and do her wonderful work.
08:13 It was at the end of the shoot,
08:15 and we shot it for about two weeks, I think.
08:16 So all these actors, these incredible actors,
08:19 are coming in and giving their testimony,
08:21 but it was also their final scene on set.
08:24 So there's this emotionality to it because we'd finished
08:26 and we were all kind of saying goodbye in real life.
08:29 And then of course, we did the final,
08:30 that final kind of climactic scene
08:32 where you kind of feel...
08:35 - ...position at Los Alamos.
08:36 I would have done anything I was asked to do.
08:38 - Well, then you wouldn't have built the H-bomb, too,
08:40 wouldn't you?
08:41 - I couldn't.
08:42 - I didn't ask you that, doctor!
08:43 - It's almost like his whole psyche
08:45 is kind of exploding in the room.
08:46 And of course, with Chris, he did that practical,
08:48 like blew the wall out and stuff like that,
08:50 and all that crazy light and everything.
08:53 And that was the segment of the shoot
08:55 that I loved the most.
08:56 I loved being out in the desert as well,
08:58 except it was fucking freezing,
08:59 which is not supposed to be in a desert.
09:01 Was there a source material piece
09:02 that you referenced frequently?
09:04 - I think with all projects,
09:06 the script is your most valuable resource always,
09:09 because that's what's going to end up on screen.
09:11 With this, we also had "American Prometheus,"
09:14 the book which Chris adapted for his screenplay.
09:16 And then there was just endless,
09:19 endless amounts of reading material available
09:22 on Oppenheimer and that time.
09:23 And there's so much archive footage available.
09:26 So I sampled from all of it and used all of it.
09:30 And I was kind of working on two different tracks.
09:33 I was kind of doing the academic part,
09:36 the kind of intellectual part,
09:37 and then I was doing the physical part.
09:39 And then there was a third track
09:40 that was just the kind of instinctual part.
09:42 They all kind of fed into,
09:44 to eventually what became the performance.
09:46 I love research and Chris loves prep.
09:50 So that worked.
09:51 But I think when you get on set,
09:53 you can't be finished.
09:54 Do you know what I mean?
09:55 The character can't be there.
09:57 It has to evolve over the shoot.
09:59 So it's always a work in progress all the time.
10:01 And for me, acting is always an instinctual exercise,
10:06 not an intellectual one.
10:07 I love reading and I love absorbing all the information,
10:11 but ultimately when you get on stage,
10:12 it has to be emotional and truthful.
10:16 All the academia in the world
10:17 ain't gonna help you then, you know?
10:19 What are your thoughts on practical effects versus CGI?
10:22 Well, again, because I've worked with Chris for so long
10:27 and I'm such a fan of how he makes and presents films,
10:30 I really believe that the audience responds
10:33 in a different way to in-camera real effects.
10:35 And I think we've become so sophisticated
10:38 at consuming films and that horrible word content.
10:43 We are much more cynical, I think,
10:45 about effects that don't look true and truthful.
10:50 And I know it isn't possible all the time,
10:52 but I'm very much of the belief
10:54 that when it can happen in camera, it should.
10:56 Certainly from a performer's point of view,
10:58 when you're in the real environment
11:00 and effects are happening around you,
11:02 it does something to you in how you respond.
11:05 That transfers to the camera
11:08 and it kind of electrifies the performance.
11:11 I mean, I remember on "Inception,"
11:13 that first scene where I meet Leo in a bar
11:16 and Chris wanted the water in the glass to tilt,
11:18 so he built the whole set on a gimbal
11:21 so that the whole set would tilt like that.
11:22 So we all were going like this on that set.
11:25 You feel that as performers,
11:27 so it does something to how you perform.
11:30 "The day you finished filming,
11:32 "how did you celebrate being able
11:34 "to step out of your Oppenheimer brain?"
11:36 How did I do?
11:37 I probably had a big sandwich
11:40 and a pint of Guinness or something like that.
11:44 It takes a while when you're deep into the work
11:47 and you've been playing a character like that
11:50 for such a long time.
11:51 And I'm not talking about the method or anything like that.
11:54 I'm just talking about the focus,
11:55 doing it for that long with all the prep
11:57 for 15, 16, 17 hours a day,
12:01 and there's an abrupt stop.
12:03 You have an awful lot of displaced energy.
12:05 You're neither the character or yourself.
12:08 You're somewhere in the middle.
12:09 And yeah, it takes a minute.
12:12 It takes longer than that,
12:14 but you go on a holiday and you hang out with your family,
12:16 and then eventually you find somewhere else
12:19 to put all that kind of focused energy.
12:22 It's always a little heartbreaking finishing a job,
12:25 but then you kind of move on.
12:26 We're just like, it's like a traveling circus.
12:29 "What is your favorite historical time period
12:31 "that you've gotten to live through in your roles?"
12:34 Yeah, I seem to play a lot of characters from the past.
12:37 I don't know, every time I was playing those characters,
12:39 they seemed to be living through terrible upheaval
12:42 and strife. [laughs]
12:43 And so I'm not quite sure.
12:45 I mean, the '20s seemed like fun.
12:48 I'm sure if you had a bit of money,
12:51 but there was great music in the '20s.
12:54 I would've been into that.
12:55 If I could just step off the set
12:56 and just go to the clubs and listen to the music,
12:58 I'd be happy.
12:59 In the '70s or the '20s or even the '50s,
13:01 I'd be just in the clubs, listening to music.
13:03 (upbeat music)