Oppenheimer" Production Notes
Edward Teller
Benny Safdie
Frank Oppenheimer
Dylan Arnold
Hans Bethe
Gustaf Skarsgård
Isidor Rabi
David Krumholtz
Vannevar Bush
Matthew Modine
William Borden
David Dastmalchian
Albert Einstein
Tom Conti
Christopher Nolan’s script for Oppenheimer called for a massive cast to play the dozens of characters representing some of the most important movers and shakers of the 20th century. Nolan didn’t want to use composite characters for the sake of simplifying things, feeling it was wrong to attribute the significant, signature ideas or innovations of one renowned figure to another. And as his characters would be moving in and out of the story in briskly paced scenes, and sometimes, in meaty cameos, he wanted to make sure that they popped distinctly for the audience and stayed vivid in their mind.
“Cillian Murphy playing Oppenheimer was the centerpiece of the film,” Nolan says. “But I knew that Cillian was going to need the most extraordinary ensemble around him, great actors who could challenge him and push him. In a film with so many different faces, each one had to be distinctive and credible. So, the breadth of the ensemble that casting director JOHN PAPSIDERA put together is a huge feature of the film. It’s hugely important for the audience to be able to track who’s doing what and who’s important in what way. These actors had to come to set every day with a tight, specific knowledge of their character’s role in things, what contribution they made to the Manhattan Project, what they brought to a particular meeting, experiment, or argument on a particular day. So, I was on set every day surrounded by actors who knew more than I did about what was going on, from their point of view, and that’s what you’re really looking for as a director.”
Edward Teller
Benny Safdie
As Oppenheimer was dubbed “the father of the atomic bomb,” Edward Teller is known for being “the father of the hydrogen bomb.”
Working under Oppenheimer as they sought to crack the secrets of fission, Teller struggled to be a team player and often worked apart from his colleagues to chase his own goals. He clashed with his boss over focus—he believed they should pursue the more difficult goal of building more powerful hydrogen bombs. Even as he urged his colleague to develop the strongest possible thermonuclear weapons, it was Teller who first speculated about “the terrible possibility” that frightened Oppenheimer, the potential for setting the Earth’s atmosphere on fire.
To play Teller, Christopher Nolan chose Benny Safdie, who has appeared in such movies as Licorice Pizza and Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret? Oppenheimer presented Safdie with an opportunity to explore a path not taken. “I almost became a physicist; I was like this close,” Safdie says. “There was a moment in my life where it was like, ‘movies or physics.’ I chose movies, but all through high school, I was learning about the standard model and quantum mechanics. I was studying with a teacher at Columbia University and visiting major laboratories, all the things one does when seriously thinking about becoming a physicist. So, it was kind of insane that Chris asked me to do this. It was an amazing confluence of my own interests.”
Safdie was fascinated by the mix of genius and vanity in Teller, and how even amid the seemingly heroic mission of the Manhattan Project, personal foibles and frailties threatened to undermine the work. “The movie is very true to the science, but also to each scientist,” Safdie says. “Each one is such a character, with these complex personalities and extraordinary achievements. It’s amazing that there was a period where they all worked in the same room. They were all there for the same thing, to chase the same goal, but they did not check their egos at the door, which is part of what makes it so interesting. There is also a quality of mutual respect that is unique to this time, even between Oppenheimer and Teller, to some extent. It’s nice to see that play out too in the movie, too.”
Like every member of the Manhattan Project supporting cast, Safdie was supplied with film of his real-life counterpart to get a bead on the voice, mannerisms and personality of his character. “The thing about so much of the film we have of these scientists is that they’re lecturing or explaining things, so they’re performing for each other or for students,” Safdie says. “They’re smart people trying to be smart and showing off. And Teller had this big kind of bravado when he spoke, with all these pauses and motions. But there was this one clip where he talks about his friend John von Neumann, a mathematician and physicist, and he gets kind of soft and subtle. I was like, okay, this is the key to the voice. From there, it was a matter of like fine-tuning the subtleties, like his slight lisp and his tone, or adjusting and modifying the voice for the scenes when he’s older.”
For Safdie, one of the pleasures of working on Oppenheimer was watching a fellow director at work, specifically one who typically works on a size and scale larger than Safdie’s own movies. “We shot this sequence set at a party with 100 people,” says Safdie. “We had to shoot three or four scenes in the party before going to a different location to do a whole other scene. It was a big day of work, and Chris just banged it out, bam, bam, bam, bam. That was insanely impressive to see on something as big as this. And inspiring, too. Chris moved with a speed and efficiency, but more importantly, and more subtly, a confidence that allows him to play and get exactly what he needs from everyone in the time we have together. The door closes on the room, and everybody knows that we’re all in it, working together to figure things out on the fly. It was great to be a part of and fun to see.”
Dylan Arnold
Robert Oppenheimer’s younger brother, Frank Oppenheimer, a particle physicist, was recruited by Robert to work on the Manhattan Project.
To play Frank, Nolan chose Dylan Arnold (the recent Halloween films). But Arnold didn’t know for sure who he might be playing until after his second audition. Like most of the actors who were cast as Manhattan Project scientists, Arnold auditioned by first reading a monologue about black holes that wasn’t attributed to any character. “Then, when I got called back, I was told it was the younger brother of one of the main characters,” says Arnold. “By that time, I was really hoping to be part of the film, and I was doing all the research I could about Oppenheimer. I knew Robert had a younger brother named Frank, so I just assumed I was auditioning for that guy, so I played to that.”
Arnold further prepared for the work by speaking with Frank Oppenheimer’s son, Michael, and researching Frank’s relationship with Robert. “I read a lot about Frank,” Arnold says. “Watched a few videos. There isn’t a ton of stuff out there on him. However, it was very easy to prepare and do the research because I found him endlessly fascinating. Frank was all about curiosity, always trying to explore and tinker. When he was 16, he took apart his father’s piano just to see how it was built, then put it back together before his father got home. And these two brothers had a fascinating relationship. They started becoming close when Frank entered his teenage years and became interested in physics. But then later, as adults, they kind of drifted apart, in large part, because of Frank’s politics. Frank was someone who did what he felt was right and was willing to accept the consequences whatever they were. At the time, he felt that joining the Communist party was the right thing to do because it was the antithesis of fascism, which was sweeping across the world. So, to him, that seemed like the logical answer.”
Arnold says it was particularly meaningful to shoot in the same remote regions of New Mexico that meant so much to Frank and Robert as children, and then as adults working on the Manhattan Project. “Being on location was really powerful,” Arnold says. “Chris doesn’t allow phones on set, too, and since the New Mexico scenes takes place in the 1940s, when obviously nobody had a cell phone, it really placed me in the mindset of what it would be like to be out there and spend your time in the canyons, riding up the side of a mountain on a horse, dealing with wind and rain and the elements, away from everyone. It felt magical. As an actor it does a lot of the work for you. You don’t have to look at a green screen, you don’t have to imagine all this stuff, to put yourself in a different place and time. You’re there.”
Gustaf Skarsgård
Hans Bethe headed the theoretical division of the Manhattan Project and developed the design for the bombs detonated at Trinity and Nagasaki.
To play Bethe, Christopher Nolan chose Gustaf Skarsgård, an acclaimed Swedish actor, known throughout the world for the TV show Vikings and Ben Affleck’s recent directorial effort, Air. “I had the benefit of having so much material to look at to prepare,” Skarsgård says. “There’s a whole series of YouTube videos where Hans tells pretty much his whole life story and his whole experience of working with Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. It provided a template I could draw from. Still, I didn’t want to imitate the man. I wanted to bring a flavor of this person to the scenes, and understanding what and who the scenes are about, gauging how much of that flavor to bring.”
Like Matt Damon, Skarsgård says he was drawn to Oppenheimer because of how it resonated with him personally, having come of age with the fear of nuclear war, and because it begs questions about our future, as well. “We are living in a world that was created as a direct consequence of the Manhattan Project,” Skarsgård says. “I grew up in the 1980s in Sweden, right next door to the Soviet Union, and I remember we had to do safety drills in bunkers under our school. That was the reality then, and now we must worry if we’re going back to that.”
David Krumholtz
Robert Oppenheimer tried to recruit his friend Isidor Isaac Rabi to the Manhattan Project—Rabi was distinguishing himself in the fields of nuclear physics and chemistry—but Rabi declined an official role. He didn’t want to move to Los Alamos, and he had personal and moral objections to the endeavor of making bombs. But Rabi did support Oppenheimer by working as a consultant, and he was there, with Oppenheimer, for the Trinity test.
To play Rabi, Nolan called on David Krumholtz, who had captured Nolan’s attention many years earlier during the actor’s acclaimed performance on the CBS drama Numb3rs as a math prodigy who solves crimes for the FBI. “Many years ago, I met Chris while I was doing Numb3s and he told me he liked my work on it,” says Krumholtz, whose considerable work on stage and screen includes another role that served him well for Oppenheimer, playing physicist Werner Heisenberg in Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen. “I always kept it in the back of my mind that Chris Nolan was a fan because those kinds of fans are hard to come by. So, when the Oppenheimer opportunity came up, I thought: Score! I knew he’s seen my work and likes it, so I went to Los Angeles to audition for it. He couldn’t have been more kind, but in my audition, he said: ‘Do it again, but this time, do it like you’re driving home from this audition and you’re thinking ‘I should’ve done it another way.’ I thought: ‘I just totally blew it.’ I was depressed for about five hours, and that same day, they called and said I was in.”
As he researched Isidor Rabi, Krumholtz keyed into the physicist’s spiritual qualities and what he offered Oppenheimer as a role model and ally. “I was taken aback at how down-to-earth and street-wise Rabi was,” says Krumholtz. “Rabi was this philosopher-scientist who believed science was an art form and that scientists were true artists. It made sense that he sympathized so deeply with the burden that Oppenheimer had on his shoulders, and that he could be a friend to Oppenheimer at all. There’s a certain kind of scientist archetype where they’re totally brilliant, but they have a chip missing. They have a gift of analysis, but they have social issues. Some of the film is about Robert Oppenheimer not necessarily having all the chips. He was an extreme genius, but he lacked balance in his life. But Rabi was Oppenheimer’s opposite; Rabi had extraordinary balance. I wanted to bring that sense of wisdom to the role, this old-soul quality to him, this compassion, which he showed especially to Oppenheimer. He was like a brother to him, like family.”
In Oppenheimer, Krumholtz sees a timeless tale about impossible ethical conflict on a grand scale and a timely call for wiser stewardship of the Earth. “When a tough choice needs to be made between two options that are ethically questionable, you just hope you have the right people in charge making those decisions,” Krumholtz says. “Sometimes, good things can come from the choice. Rabi went on to do revolutionary work in discovering magnetic resonance, which gave us the MRI and the ability to do all sorts of wonderful things to save lives. So much good has come out of the discoveries that were needed to build the bomb, but so much destruction has come from it, too, and still can. It’s a scary world as a result, but I still have hope. I like riding the future. Hopefully, the right people end up doing the right things with the science at their disposal to save the planet.”
Matthew Modine
In 1941, Vannevar Bush was named director of the newly formed Office of Scientific Research and Development, with a broad mandate to cultivate innovation in medicine and weapons technology. Amid growing concern that other countries were developing an atom bomb, it was Bush who mobilized the military-industrial complex to enter the race to crack the code of fission.
To play Bush, Christopher Nolan cast Matthew Modine, renowned for his lead role in Stanley Kubrick’s classic Full Metal Jacket and for playing a more sinister sort of scientist chasing cosmic secrets in Stranger Things. Like his co-stars Matt Damon and Gustaf Skarsgård, Modine has vivid memories of how the nuclear threat during the Cold War shaped his childhood. “There are moments, events, and sometimes people who divide time,” Modine says. “The 16th of July 1945 is an extreme example of both. The first atomic explosion at Los Alamos unleashed a monster that could never be leashed again. As a kindergartner, crawling under my school desk, I didn’t understand if this drill was a present or existential threat. Today I understand the drill was both—and ever present.
David Dastmalchian
A zealous advocate for U.S. nuclear superiority and staunchly anti-Communist, William Borden was a lawyer and scholar specializing in national security issues who became the executive director of the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. During his final months on the job in 1953, Borden became fixated on the idea that Oppenheimer was spying for the Soviet Union.
To play one of Oppenheimer’s late-life antagonists, Nolan enlisted David Dastmalchian, whose extensive credits include Dune and Blade Runner 2049. “The thing that I immediately latched onto was the letter that Borden wrote to J. Edgar Hoover and the impassioned writing that he did about Oppenheimer,” Dastmalchian says. “I believe in my heart that Borden truly, truly believed that Oppenheimer was an enemy of the state and so bringing him down and stopping him from having influence over our government and military was paramount. That was a simple objective for me when I started building the character.”
Dastmalchian made his first film appearance in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. “I came to that movie in such a massive state of complete anxiety, panic attack, because I had never been on a film set before,” Dastmalchian says. “But the thing that is so constant and consistent is how Chris sets you at ease as a performer. He just communicated his ideas so clearly, with such confidence, that I immediately knew I was in hands that were not only safe but were going to get the best out of me. So, as soon as I stepped onto the set of Oppenheimer, I was like, ‘Oh, there’s that feeling.’ And it’s a really good feeling as an actor.”
Tom Conti
To play Albert Einstein, the legendary scientist whose theory of relativity was the “big bang” of the new physics, making the atomic bomb possible, Christopher Nolan cast Tom Conti, whose 60-year career on stage and screen includes a Tony Award for Whose Life Is It Anyway? in 1979 and an Oscar® nomination for Reuben, Reuben in 1983. “It’s a terrific story,” Conti says. “Most people my age know about the making of the bomb, but not everybody knows the political chicanery that surrounded the exercise, and what happened to Oppenheimer afterwards. It was a very strange situation—the government couldn’t forgive him for saving America. He’d saved their asses so by way of thanks, they tried to destroy him.”
Where does one start when preparing to portray someone as iconic as Einstein? “Grow the hair and start the moustache,” says Conti with a laugh. “Having a moustache is hateful and when it comes to moustaches, Albert wasn’t a minimalist. You can’t eat soup or spaghetti and without those, life is diminished. Einstein’s accent is phenomenally important. Fortunately, it’s a sound with which I’m very familiar. Since I live in Europe, I grew up with people who spoke like him—just the accent of course. The physics? Maybe not so much.”
