While the Oppenheimer cast is good friends, it appears that a medical emergency happened to Cillian Murphy during the film’s production, as star Emily Blunt has disclosed.
In a new interview with The Sun, the Oscar-nominated actress, 40, said she and co-star Cillian Murphy, 47, really leaned into their characters for the film, which is considered a front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar.
During a stressful interaction, Emily’s Kitty is supposed to smack Cillian’s Oppenheimer, and both her scene partner and director Christopher Nolan encouraged her to do it several times.
“Sorry about your cheekbone, Cillian,” she apologized. “Poor Cillian. Chris said, ‘Hit him’. And I said, ‘I don’t know’. And Cillian said, ‘Do it, do it’. Chris said, ‘He’ll be fine…do it’. I slapped him, then grabbed him by the collar.
The mood of the picture added to the gravity of the situation, and Emily observed that her slapping was beginning to appear on his cheek. “I just saw over the course of, like, ten takes that very famous cheekbone became even more prominent — and it’s not even in the movie.”
Despite the fact that that sequence did not make the final edit of the film, it was still pivotal and generated a stressful moment on set owing to its seriousness.
Emily explained that they were also fighting a battle with light, saying, “I was aware on the day that we didn’t have much time, just slightly aware of the tension building on set.”
“And it’s a difficult scene for Cillian since he has to speak incoherently. So you stagger through practices, knowing that it will start to pick up the more you do it.”
However, there were further occasions of anguish for the Peaky Blinders star, for which Emily expressed regret, though she quipped before her following anecdote: “He’s going to kill me for telling this story.”
Emily got her co-star a “fantastic” cushion at the start of production for the blockbuster film in New Mexico, because she was concerned about his sleeping patterns owing to the nature of his role.
“I was very concerned about Cillian’s sleep when we started shooting because I felt he had a monumental undertaking with this role,” she went on to say. “I thought, like, that’s a good start-of-shoot gift.”
However, the gift became a touch too sweet as she continued: “He told me he woke up in the middle of the night and was so excited to fluff himself back to sleep on the pillow that he sort of threw his head down and smashed his head open on the bedside table.”
“He was luxuriating in it so much that he smashed his head open,” she explained, noting that the incident necessitated medical treatment on set. “So he came to set and they had to glue his head shut, all because of the pillow.”
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