Robert Downey Jr. had trouble reading Christopher Nolan‘s “Oppenheimer” script…literally.
The actor revealed during Entertainment Weekly’s “Around the Table” video series (below) that Nolan opted to print the script on red paper with black ink — a standard practice for top-secret Hollywood scripts that makes them difficult to photocopy.
“I went over to this house, I read it,” Downey said. “I don’t want to complain, but it’s on red paper printed in black, which is kind of difficult, at best.”
He continued, “I guess there’s something about it that makes it that you forget it as soon as you read it. I don’t know what those colors are. It’s kind of like being hypnotized.”
Downey quipped to his co-stars Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Cillian Murphy that he received “three dozen yellow roses” from Nolan to convince him to take the role of Lewis Strauss, the former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer — Strauss is teased as one of the antagonists of the film.
“Mine was a slower courtship process, because [Nolan] knew for sure I was going to say yes no matter what,” Downey recalled.
The Marvel star told The New York Times earlier this year that he felt drawn to the role of Lewis Strauss.
“I don’t know why I can relate to Lewis Strauss so much, but I felt like I was meant to play this role,” Downey said, “and I knew I’d be in capable hands. ‘Oppenheimer’ has been a bit of a demarcation line for me. I knew there was a point where Chris Nolan was endorsing, let’s work those other muscles, but let’s do it while rendering you devoid of your usual go-to things.”
Nolan has called Downey’s performance in “Oppenheimer” a “completely different” kind of role for the actor. The writer-director is also known for hand-delivering his scripts and preferring physical copies over digital.
“It’s not secrecy, it’s privacy,” the writer-director told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s being able to try things, to make mistakes, to be as adventurous as possible. And to be able to sit with somebody who’s just read what you’ve written and get their take on it, see how they connect with it in a very human, face-to-face way.”
