Emily Blunt has been out on tour, and it’s a relief when Robert Downey Jr. is out there with her. With the main Oppenheimer cast now back out on the campaign trail, after having their film’s release campaign memorably cut short by the actors’ strike, she’s reuniting with her co-stars for post-screening Q&As and other awards-centric events. “We really love each other, we really like being together, and we're talking about a film that we're so awestruck and proud of,” Blunt says. “So that helps, right?”

But loving each other doesn't necessarily mean loving being in the spotlight — which is where the ever-loquacious Downey comes in. “Cillian [Murphy] and I just love it,” she says. “Because Cillian’s so shy, we just love it when Robert comes in because he's so kinetic and he's so bonkers. He has the most amazing way of never answering a question directly but somehow you're given  an even more juicy answer. We're all madly in love with him, we really are.”

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Blunt describes these as reunions with the “Oppenheimer dudes,” which nicely sums up her unusual role in the film, heavily dominated by actors playing the scientists who surrounded J. Robert Oppenheimer during the Manhattan Project, and then the politicians who then persecuted him after the war. In scenes set in a dingy interrogation room in 1954, where Oppenheimer was questioned about his past Communist ties, Blunt is quite literally the only woman in the room as Kitty, Oppenheimer’s wife. For a long time Blunt is only seen in the background, silently stewing as she sits behind Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer while he is mercilessly grilled by investigators and even testified against by his former colleagues. She says it wasn’t so different in reality on the set. “It was a very claustrophobic, very shabby little room, and that's how Chris wanted it,” Blunt says. “I could only see the back of Cillian’s head, or his ear. But I could see all of those men just tormenting him, really. I realized for Kitty, she must have been simmering with rage and frustration that no one was vouching for him. No one was fighting. So I guess by the time I got to do my testifying scene, I'd watched everyone come through and just bully him, really.”

On this week’s Little Gold Men  podcast Blunt dives deep on several other mesmerizing Oppenheimer scenes, including the monologue in which she reveals Kitty’s improbable past, and explains what it means when Nolan offers a “very English compliment” on the set. Listen to the interview below, where you can also read excerpts from the interview. 

So Emily, we were just talking about how, um, the screening circuit, the Q and A's for this time of year for Oppenheimer's kept you guys really, really busy. Um, I mean, you've done this before. You've been through this period of kind of promoting a movie in the awards season, but you guys didn't have the chance to do this for months and months and months.

**Little Gold Men: **In Q&As you’ve done with the Oppenheimer crew, it seems like you’re the one who connects the most with Robert Downey Jr. and speaks his language. Is that from knowing each other previously, or going through the Oppenheimer experience?

Emily Blunt: I mean, he's very easy to get to know. He's so fun and open and curious. I don't know if I know him better than any of the other dudes in the cast—and I didn't really have any scenes with him in the movie. I remember it was his first day, and we'd been working for a while on it, and he was coming in late to start his stuff. I went into the trailer and he was having his head sort of shaved backwards, you know, and dyed white. I said, oh god, Robert, you're gonna love it so much. I said, Chris is incredible, really tightens the screws on you. But get ready for some very British compliments, because that's what you will get. There will be no smoke being blown up your arse. 

What's a British compliment? What's an example of that?

[Imitating Nolan] "Good, yeah? Happy? Okay, moving on.” That's it.

But you're like, great, this is my native tongue.

This is my native tongue. I mean, Chris even looks like my uncle, so this is all very familiar territory to me.

When I read American Prometheus earlier this year, the moment I really locked into the book was when it got into Kitty's backstory and her entire life before she met Oppenheimer. And I also was like, that'll never be in the movie. There's no way that there's time for that. And I'm wondering if when you get the script, you locked it in the same way I did when it got to that moment in the film. Like, I cannot believe they made time for this and that it works in this giant movie.

I think that's what Chris Nolan is so brilliant at. That he is able to showcase at such a velocity every nuance of this story and every person who had an impact on his life. And I think hers was quite a startling force in his life. So yeah, that first scene that we have on the Hilltops with the horses and she's rattling off her whole life history. Yes, you get an idea a window into her, but I also thought that scene was like a seduction You know, it's really just her at great pace trying to seduce him by how interesting and wild she is. At least that was what I thought would be fun to do for the scene

Do you remember how you prepare for a scene like that? Because it is sort of a monologue. It's a lot of information. And it feels very clear when it's played out, but I wonder what goes through your head to make it play out as clearly as it does.

They were like two comets. So I had an intention with those early scenes of making that connection really, as potent as possible. So you understand why he would leave the warm, loving arms of Jean Tatlock for someone as sort of sharp edged as she was. But, I think they were intellectual stimuli for each other and, and even though she had sort of managed to sort of work her way through a bunch of husbands by the time she was 29, he was her one and only, really. And however tempestuous and I'm sure volatile and ugly their marriage probably was, fueled by too many martinis and a lot of cigarettes, I think it was a successful marriage ultimately.

I really never got over the detail in the book about how they would have dinner parties but never serve food. 

And so much alcohol. And that's why the Oppenheimers were so emaciated. They just never ate, and I think survived on Coca Cola and martinis and cigarettes. You should probably go get a burger on the way to the Oppenheimers.

You were talking earlier about very English compliments, and I'm curious about Nolan as a director for particularly for people like you, Robert Downey Jr., Cillian, Matt Damon— people who are very experienced actors.  We know that you are in charge of your craft as an actor, but what difference does it make to work with a director like Nolan?

Honestly, the most beautiful part about the way he directs is the environment he creates for you just has no chaos. At all. None. I mean, I'm sure he was holding a storm in his brain every day, but you felt none of it. He's so understated. He speaks to you privately and intimately. His notes are really transforming and he never comes in before three takes. He understands actors. He knows you've got to throw a bunch of stuff against the wall to see what sticks. I think a lot of actors do self correct within a few takes. You can tell when you've played a doozy. You can tell. And he's just lets you mine around for a bit. And then he'll just come in in the quietest way and he'll just go, you know, “Have you thought about this? Maybe we could play it like this.”

I think the unusual part of him, I guess we all forget because he's such an extraordinary filmmaker, but he's an extraordinary writer as well. But I think what's unusual about him is he doesn't straitjacket you, you know, with some presupposed idea of how he thought the scene would be when he wrote it. He's really curious and interested in your take on it.

This movie runs like a ticking clock, and there's no piece out of place, but it doesn't sound like making it felt that way.

Well, I can't believe the movie was shot in 57 days. I think there was an element of it that felt like a runaway train, in setting the scenes up and moving locations—okay, we shot this for half a day, now we're over here. I think that stuff moved like the wind. But then once you're on set, it was never that you felt you couldn't get another take or that there wasn't room or space for you to find it.  And I think that's how he can become this big sort of quiet conductor of it all and just get rid of all the noise for you so you can have space, really. 

I was thinking about you and Cillian getting ready to release A Quiet Place Part II five days before the world shuts down in 2020. And then you reunited a whole pandemic later on this set. I’m curious about how much you guys had changed, or if there still was enough of a connection or some combination of the two.

I just adore him so deeply as a person, certainly as an actor. He's one of my favorite people in the world, not just my favorite scene partner. I think jumping into this complicated marriage, it was so helpful to have a shared history and a shorthand and a sort of secret language. We knew we trusted each other, we knew we liked working together, we could have fun between takes. There was levity, which, for a film as intense as this one,—actually for both of them, Quiet Place was really intense as well. I think Cillian and I need to do a nice kind of quiet, a nice kind of comedy somewhere and just see, see how that goes.