How Mr. Rogers And Orson Welles Helped Prepare Cillian Murphy For Oppenheimer

You may have noticed over the years that, despite his very distinctive appearance, Cillian Murphy has a history as a bit of a chameleon — even within his collaborations with Christopher Nolan alone. His various performances all stand apart from each other, utilizing several different accents and mannerisms to bring such characters to life. For the talented Irish actor, it’s an underappreciated facet of his work and one that he really put the time and effort to get right in “Oppenheimer.” In an interview with BBC Radio, Murphy revealed the rather surprising influences that went into how he ultimately figured out his voice as Oppenheimer:

“Well, from the beginning we didn’t want to do an impersonation or an impression. That’s not part of my skill set at all. However, he was very distinctive in the way he spoke and that kind of timbre and that pitch that he had. It’s an accent you don’t hear anymore in an American. You know, it’s very kind of like Orson Welles, Mr. Rogers, kind of from that same world.”

“He was a reference for us! Just in terms of the tone, really. I just spent a lot of time walking around in my basement talking to myself, you know? As you do.”

It’s not all that surprising the actor would look to older generations of American icons to model his take on Oppenheimer after their specific speech patterns, but it likely will raise a few eyebrows to hear that Mr. Rogers ended up on his mood board. But taken together with Welles, it does make a certain amount of sense when you go back and really listen to how they talked. It just goes to show that you never quite know where your research will lead.