James Woods urged to 'remain invisible' during Oppenheimer promotion

James Woods claims he was warned not to promote 'Oppenheimer', due to his conservative views.

The 77-year-old actor is an executive producer on the Oscar-winning film but alleged he was "gently" discouraged from taking part in any publicity for the movie due to his X feed, where he has supported Donald Trump in the past.

Speaking on Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM show, he said: "When 'Oppenheimer' came out, there was a discussion about my Twitter, and it was gently suggested that I basically remain invisible — which was painful.

"On the other hand, I’m a pragmatic person and I thought: A lot of people put their effort into this, so I’m just going to be an invisible pariah because the people who are going to be voting for Oscars — which is very important to films, to get Oscars because it does help with the financial reward and historical archive in which it will rest forever. I don’t want to deprive those people.

"I don’t want some nutcase to come out of the woodwork and fabricate some ridiculous story about me, I’ve had a million of them and they’re all lies. I don’t want that to happen and have the clickbait story be, ‘James Woods is the executive producer of Oppenheimer, we’re not going to watch that movie!’ So I stepped back and basically took one for the team. You wouldn’t even know — I was not even invited to the Producers Guild of America awards. I’m a producer on the picture! And I was not invited to go to the Producers Guild of America awards. Which was fine."

However, James did receive a shoutout at the Oscars from friend and producer Chuck Roven, who thanked him for bringing the book 'American Prometheus' - on which the film is based - to his attention.

Speaking previously to The Hollywood Reporter, Roven said: "With Oppenheimer, it was kind of a serendipitous thing. I had been approached by J. David Wargo and James Woods. I never knew Wargo, but James introduced me to him because they were friendly. And Wargo had the underlying rights to [Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s] book, 'American Prometheus'."