Director talks about intimate scenes in Oppenheimer

Director Christopher Nolan said he felt “appropriately nervous” filming the intimate scenes for his upcoming film Oppenheimer.

Based on the 2005 biography ‘American Prometheus’ by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film chronicles the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist who was pivotal in developing the first nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project, and thereby ushering in the Atomic Age.

It is Nolan’s first film to feature intimate scenes. The American director, who is the brains behind several critically acclaimed movies such as ‘The Prestige’, the Batman series, Dunkirk, Inception and Insomnia, said he was nervous shooting the scenes.

"Any time you're challenging yourself to work in areas you haven't worked in before, you should be appropriately nervous and appropriately careful and planned and prepared," Nolan told Insider in a recent interview.

"When you look at Oppenheimer's life and you look at his story, that aspect of his life, the aspect of his sexuality, his way with women, the charm that he exuded, it's an essential part of his story."

The scenes are instrumental in depicting a passionate relationship between Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, and Florence Pugh's character Jean Tatlock.

"It felt very important to understand their relationship and to really see inside it and understand what made it tick without being coy or allusive about it, but to try to be intimate, to try and be in there with him and fully understand the relationship that was so important to him,” Nolan said.

Due to the sex and nudity, Oppenheimer was rated R in the U.S., marking Nolan's first movie to garner that rating since 2002's Insomnia.