Is Christopher Nolan a difficult taskmaster? Cillian Murphy says 'Oppenheimer' director is 'not sympathetic to toilet breaks'
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: The ‘Barbieheimer’ fever is on as the two most anticipated summer releases are hitting the theaters on July 21. ‘Oppenheimer’ director Christopher Nolan is never known to be a lenient taskmaster, with several stars who have worked with him complaining about the strict rules he follows in his sets. The latest in the list is ‘The Dark Knight’ director being “not that sympathetic to toilet breaks,” as told by his friend and longtime collaborator, Cillian Murphy.
The 'Peaky Blinders' star revealed one such difficult situation that the actors have to undergo. In an interview with Collider, when the ‘28 Days Later’ star was asked to reveal an astounding fact about Nolan, Murphy replied, "He's not that sympathetic to toilet breaks. I'll leave that there."
‘But he's phenomenal, like, really phenomenal’
Not getting enough toilet breaks didn’t deter him from collaborating with Nolan, and praise him for that matter In fact, he is one of the staple actors of ‘The Prestige’ director’s camp after collaborating with him on several projects including ‘Dunkirk’, ‘Inception’ and ‘The Dark Knight’. In the same interview, Murphy praised the director also for his method of working with his actors.
The ‘Red Eye’ star said of the ‘Memento’ director, "He is brilliant with actors, understands actors, loves actors, really believes in actors and what they can bring to the story and to the character. So an awful lot of the time we'll just find it.” He said that Nolan also allows the actors to experiment and improvise scenes, saying, “We'll be shooting but we'll be finding the scene and he'll let us experiment and explore stuff,” before adding, "And then he may come in and just kind of whisper very quietly in your ear, and generally the notes are very precise and succinct and brief, where they can totally spin the performance." The Irish actor didn’t stop here as he continued to eulogize, "And that's his genius. It also comes from the fact that he's written it, so he's direct access to it. But he's phenomenal, like, really phenomenal."
Is Christopher Nolan a difficult taskmaster?
Murphy is nevertheless not the only star to complain about a particular habit of the ‘Batman Begins’ director. Previously, Anne Hathaway said in a discussion with Variety, apart from not allowing cell phones on set, ‘The Princess Diaries’ star said, “Chris also doesn’t allow chairs. I worked with him twice.”
Hathaway shared that Nolan believes if he allows chairs on set, it will lead to a decline in productivity. She continued, “He doesn’t allow chairs, and his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working. I mean, he has these incredible movies in terms of scope and ambition and technical prowess and emotion. It always arrives at the end under schedule and under budget. I think he’s onto something with the chair thing.”
'Cast and crew can sit wherever and whenever they need'
However, Hathaway’s allegations were busted by Nolan’s representative when they sent a statement to IndieWire, saying, “For the record, the only things banned from [Christopher Nolan’s] sets are cell phones (not always successfully) and smoking (very successfully).”
The statement even continued to clarify that only “the director's chairs clustered around the video monitor” are banned from the sets. “The chairs Anne was referring to are the director's chairs clustered around the video monitor, allocated on the basis of hierarchy, not a physical need.” It also gives rise to speculation that Nolan himself probably doesn’t use his chair saying, “Chris chooses not to use his but has never banned chairs from the set. Cast and crew can sit wherever and whenever they need and frequently do.”