Last year, you could see the unease fall across Cillian Murphy’s face as soon as the Oppenheimer promotion began. He quickly developed a thousand-yard stare, a sort of forced blankness as he tried to promote his starring role in the biggest movie of his career. He eventually swept the awards season, winning the Golden Globe, BAFTA, SAG and Academy Awards. By Oscar night, his social battery was completely drained and it showed, but he still managed to get through it. In between filming Oppenheimer and promoting Oppenheimer, Cillian produced and worked on Small Things Like These, set in Ireland and filmed there too. It’s based on a bestseller by the same name, and the story is based on the real-life Magdalene Laundries, which continued well into the 1990s. To promote the film (which comes out in November), Cillian recently spoke to Vanity Fair, and he confirmed that the awards season was super-painful.
How Matt Damon came on a producer: “I gave the script to Matt [Damon] when we were shooting, and he loved it,” the Irish native tells me. Murphy made a specific sell to his Oppenheimer costar that won Damon over: “I remember saying that it’s a different film, but it would share some thematic crossover with Manchester by the Sea, which Matt also produced…. It was like I was pitching between Manchester by the Sea and Doubt.” From there, Murphy gave Damon the script, and swiftly, Damon signed on to produce the project via Artists Equity, the company he cofounded with Ben Affleck. “They paid for the movie,” Murphy says bluntly. “It was remarkably quick, the way it came together.”
The tragic history of Magdalene Laundries: “It’s so seemingly simple, but it’s incredibly complex, actually, when you look at it. It’s massively intertwined with Irish people, our history and our culture and trauma and all of that stuff. I feel that sometimes art is a gentler way of addressing or confronting that than, perhaps, government reports or academic papers.”
How he felt after Oppenheimer: “I was pretty broken after Oppenheimer. Just physically and mentally, I was a bit worn out. We shot that film so fast, and the prep for it had been very intense. Losing all that weight was hard to do—and it was hard to get back to normal.” It’s no wonder, then, that the actor took a long break, of well over six months total, once filming finished on the Christopher Nolan epic. Small Things Like These was his first time back on a movie set, months after wrapping Oppenheimer, and he needed that recharging period before delving into another intense character.
Shooting the film in Ireland: “I was very happy to make a film at home.” But Murphy found the weight of Bill’s trauma difficult to carry at times, particularly after filming an especially emotionally draining scene in a barber shop. “It does exact a bit of a cost,” Murphy says. “Your psyche is trying to understand why you’re feeling what you’re making yourself feel.”
He hasn’t fully processed his awards season: “It was a bit of a fever dream, and very overwhelming.”
It sounds like working on Oppenheimer was harder than promoting it, although Cillian lucked out (inadvertently) with the actors’ strike and writers’ strike. I’m glad he had time to decompress after he shot Oppenheimer, and I would assume he did the same after the awards season too. It’s so funny to watch a full-grown introverted adult man deal with all of the craziness that comes with a huge box office success and winning a lot of awards. Props to Cillian though – he did it without whining or throwing tantrums. As for Small Things Like These, I’m really interested in seeing it, although I know it’s going to make me mad. All of that Catholicism and Church abuses, all of it in plain sight. More art pieces need to be made about this awful chapter of Irish history.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
