Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy says ‘awkward’ sex scenes with Florence Pugh were ‘vital’

Cillian Murphy has defended the use of sex scenes in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, insisting they were “vital” to the story.

The Hollywood blockbuster tells the story of American scientist J Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb during the Second World War.

During the course of the feature film, viewers learn of the nuclear scientist’s personal life also, notably his affair with psychiatrist and physician Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, while he was married to Katherine “Kitty” Puening, played by Emily Blunt.

Responding to chatter around the sex scenes, Murphy told GQ recently that were “vital” to the feature’s storyline, albeit admitting that filming them are “the most awkward possible part” of their job.

He shared: “I think [the sequences] were vital in this movie. I think the relationship that he has with Jean Tatlock is one of the most crucial [and] emotional parts of the film.

“I think if they’re key to the story then they’re worthwhile. Listen, no one likes doing them, they’re the most awkward possible part of our job. But sometimes you have to get on with it.”

In a previous interview, the film’s director Christopher Nolan agreed with Murphy’s take on the intimate scenes.

He told Insider: “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.

“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.”

Murphy’s comments come as the biopic faced a backlash in India for quoting a sacred Hindu text during a sex scene.

In one scene, actor Murphy, who plays Oppenheimer, recites a famous line from the Bhagavad Gita after having sex with Pugh’s Jean Tatlock.

“Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds,” he reads out, a phrase the physicist reportedly recalled when the first atomic bomb he invented was detonated on July 16, 1945.

However, the scene has sparked outrage from officials in the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Uday Mahurkar, a senior official at the government’s Central Information Commission, called it “a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus”.