Robert Downey Jr. likens demanding Oppenheimer role to unusual metaphor

Robert Downey Jr. recently opened up about how demanding his role in Oppenheimer was by using an unusual and colorful metaphor.

Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s Academy Award-winning biopic, gave audiences a glimpse behind the curtain behind the life and work of J. Robert Oppenheimer aka the father of the atomic bomb.

The film was completely stacked with A-list actors including Robert Downey Jr. who played Oppenheimer’s main rival Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss.

Downey has spoken at length at how Nolan’s directorial methods were a bit intense with no chairs being allowed on set and recently he doubled down on these claims ahead of the premiere of his new project The Sympathizer.

When talking about his experience filming Oppenheimer and The Sympathizer back to back, Downey told Esquire, “I knew that playing Strauss, in Oppenheimer, was going to be like picking fly sh*t out of pepper—that it was going to be extremely exacting, that it was going to be… not confining, but liberating by its varied implicit limitations of what my usual toolbox is. So I had a feeling that, like a coiled spring, Sympathizer would be my unwind.”

Universal Pictures

It’s fascinating that Downey refer to his role in the seven episode Max series as an “unwind” from Oppenheimer as he plays four different people within the mini series, all of which act as antagonist to the series’ main character.

The Sympathizer will see Downey act as a a CIA agent, filmmaker, grad school professor, and Congressman who all work to thwart the attempts of the Captain, the main character, to spy on people for the Viet Cong.

Downey is not the only one of Nolan’s actors to express how demanding the work on his set could be, but many of them return to the director’s projects time and time again, so his method must work in some regard.