Cillian Murphy admits he was a mess after watching Interstellar
Ask four random people to name their favorite Christopher Nolan film and you might get four different answers. Ask the four main stars of Nolan's new movie Oppenheimer (out July 21) that question and that's definitely the case, as EW discovers when Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Robert Downey Jr. share their take on his filmography (even Nolan himself offers a suggestion) during our latest Around the Table conversation.
"I love Dunkirk," says Blunt. "I've seen that, like, 20 times."
"My wife and I watched The Prestige, I think, four days in a row when it came out," says Damon. "But I love Inception as well. That's kind of an impossible question. It's like saying, what's your favorite Hitchcock movie?"
Karwai Tang/WireImage; Everett Collection Cillian Murphy at the U.K. premiere of 'Oppenheimer'; Matthew McConaughey in 'Interstellar'
"You're in all of them," Blunt says to Murphy, whose professional relationship with Nolan dates back to 2005's Batman Begins in which the actor played the role of Dr. Jonathan Crane.
"No, I'm not," the actor politely corrects. "I remember seeing Interstellar in IMAX, on my own. I just remember coming out in a terrible state. It was so emotional."
"Did no one else want to watch it with you?" jokes Blunt.
"I love escaping from the house," says Murphy. "My kids were little. But it's so emotional, that movie, that always gets me every time."
Everett Collection Cillian Murphy in 'Dunkirk'
"I can't answer the question but I want to make the case for Dunkirk," says Nolan, who cast Murphy in the film as the survivor of a U-boat attack named in the credits as "Shivering soldier." "When I sent Cillian the script, he wasn't entirely enthusiastic about playing the character. You actually called me up and went like, 'Sure, I'll do it because I want to work with you, but couldn't I be a Spitfire pilot instead?' And I said 'No, I need you out on that boat.' So I convinced you, and then you're out on the boat, and you're diving in the water off the wreck, and feeling more and more miserable about it all. The character doesn't have a name, all that. But cut to a couple years later, I went to buy the box set of Peaky Blinders and on the back it said: Cillian 'Dunkirk' Murphy. I was like, job done!"
It's a good answer. But Downey has an arguably better one.
"Many people will say this is your greatest film and a culmination of aspects of every film you've ever done," says the actor to Nolan. "So it's almost like Good Will Hunting: You've made this equation where you're now at the end of the chalkboard, and what the heck would you do next? But we believe in you, sir. So my favorite film of yours is whatever the heck you do after this, because you'd better come up with something amazing."
Oppenheimer stars Murphy as theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called "father of the atomic bomb." Blunt plays Oppenheimer's wife Kitty; Damon portrays General Leslie Groves, the man responsible for putting Oppenheimer in charge of the Manhattan Project; and Downey is Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss.
Oppenheimer drops in theaters July 21.
See Nolan and his cast talk about the making of Oppenheimer in the full Around the Table video below.
EW's Around the Table interview was conducted prior to the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
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