Oppenheimer Director Christopher Nolan Reveals His Daughter Has a Gruesome Cameo

Oppenheimer is hitting theaters in less than a week, and it marks the latest film to be helmed by Christopher Nolan. The movie features a stacked cast of big-name stars, but celebrities are not the only people you will see in the film. Nolan recently revealed that his 22-year-old daughter, Flora Nolan, has a small but gruesome part in the film. The younger Nolan is a member of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, class of 2024, and she played an extra in Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar. 

“We needed someone to do that small part of a somewhat experimental and spontaneous sequence,” Nolan explained to The Telegraph. In the film, Flora plays a woman who gets the “flesh” on her face “flayed” off in a dream had by J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is being played by Cillian Murphy. “It was wonderful to just have her sort of roll with it,” Nolan said of his daughter.

“Truthfully, I try not to analyze my own intentions,” Nolan explained. “But the point is that if you create the ultimate destructive power it will also destroy those who are near and dear to you … So I suppose this was my way of expressing that in what, to me, were the strongest possible terms.”

Christopher Nolan on Re-Creating The Trinity Test in Oppenheimer:

It was previously reported that Nolan recreated a nuclear explosion without CGI, but some fans were confused by what that actually meant. The director recreated the Trinity test, which was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon back in 1945, but Nolan didn’t actually set off an atomic bomb. While chatting with The Hollywood Reporter, Nolan reacted to fans thinking he took such extreme measures to get his movie made.

“It’s flattering that people would think I would be capable of something as extreme as that on the one hand, but it’s also a little bit scary,” Nolan shared. 

“I think recreating the Trinity test without the use of computer graphics, was a huge challenge to take on,” Nolan previously told Total Film. “Andrew Jackson – my visual effects supervisor, I got him on board early on – was looking at how we could do a lot of the visual elements of the film practically, from representing quantum dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself, to recreating, with my team, Los Alamos up on a mesa in New Mexico in extraordinary weather, a lot of which was needed for the film, in terms of the very harsh conditions out there – there were huge practical challenges.” 

“It’s a story of immense scope and scale,” Nolan added. “And one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever taken on in terms of the scale of it, and in terms of encountering the breadth of Oppenheimer’s story. There were big, logistical challenges, big practical challenges. But I had an extraordinary crew, and they really stepped up. It will be a while before we’re finished. But certainly as I watch the results come in, and as I’m putting the film together, I’m thrilled with what my team has been able to achieve.”

Opening on July 21st, Oppenheimer is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.