Every new piece of information coming from the Oppenheimer team about its production, story, and shooting keeps getting more fascinating. We recently learned from Cillian Murphy the completely unsurprising fact that Christopher Nolan‘s sets are strictly professional, and now the 47-year-old actor has revealed the rigorous shooting schedule Nolan oversaw.
In an interview with Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Murphy discussed his advent to acting, his 20-year professional relationship with Nolan, and behind-the-scenes musings on Oppenheimer. In the conversation, Murphy revealed to Marc that Oppenheimer was made “unbelievably quickly” in just 57 days.
However, Murphy – having worked with Nolan on six of his films – did not have any complaints about the tight schedule. “I responded to the way he works,” the actor revealed in another interview with IGN. He’s habitual of getting pushed to the boundaries ever since he first worked with Nolan.
“He really pushes you and I really like being pushed to the point where you think you can’t go any further.”
In fact, further in Maron’s podcast, Murphy praised Nolan’s directing techniques, calling him someone who’s got all of the facets that you need in a “perfect director.”
“[He is] amazing with actors. He’s incredibly brilliant visually, he writes the thing [scripts] himself, and they’re made for the theaters.”
Speaking on how it feels to be on Nolan’s movie sets, Murphy revealed that despite the sets being huge, “it feels like being on an independent movie,” praising the passion and dedication on sets:
“There’s just Chris and the cameraman. One camera always, unless there’s some huge, huge set piece, and the boom op, and that’s it. There’s no video village, there’s no monitors, none. He’s a very analog filmmaker.”
Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s longest movie to date, which will tell the story of the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Despite being close to three hours long, the film had one of his shortest filming schedules. For comparison, epic spy film Tenet and World War II survival drama Dunkirk were both filmed over the course of 96 and 68 days, respectively.
The 57-day filming time of Oppenheimer speaks volumes of the relentless hard work all the actors and the creative team put behind the film. Apart from Murphy’s title character, the film also features Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, and a cameo from Nolan’s daughter, too.
Catch Oppenheimer exclusively in cinemas on July 21.