Robert Downey Jr. says Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer' script was printed on red paper: 'It's kind of like being hypnotized'
Universal Pictures
- Robert Downey Jr. said that Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" script was printed on red paper.
- Downey told Entertainment Weekly that it was "difficult" to read the black ink on the pages.
- "I don't know what those colors are," he said. "It's kind of like being hypnotized.."
Robert Downey Jr. said that the script for Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" was printed on red paper and it created a dizzying experience when reading the pages for the first time.
"I went over to this house, I read it," Downey said during the latest installment of Entertainment Weekly's "Around the Table" interview series. The actor plays Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, in "Oppenheimer."
"I don't want to complain, but it's on red paper printed in black, which is kind of difficult, at best," Downey said (at the 2:29 mark) of the unusual way the script was printed.
"A bit unnerving, as well," Emily Blunt, who stars as Kitty Oppenheimer, chimed in.
"I guess there's something about it that makes it that you forget it as soon as you read it," Downey continued. "I don't know what those colors are. It's kind of like being hypnotized."
Universal Pictures
"Oppenheimer," written and directed by Christopher Nolan, is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography "American Prometheus." The thriller centers on J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the American theoretical physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb.
In a recent feature for The Hollywood Reporter, Nolan explained why he prefers to personally hand-deliver scripts to actors, rather than sharing them digitally.
"It's not secrecy, it's privacy," he said. "It's being able to try things, to make mistakes, to be as adventurous as possible. And to be able to sit with somebody who's just read what you've written and get their take on it, see how they connect with it in a very human, face-to-face way."
In Downey's case, the Marvel star went to the director's LA home to read the script before accepting the role.
"I was like, 'Wow,' " Downey told THR. "And he was like, 'So will you do it?' I was like, 'Uh, usually, there's 38 phone calls.' But he's Chris Nolan. So I was like, 'Yeah, I think I will.'"
"Oppenheimer" will be released in theaters Friday.