Credit: Warner Bros.Christopher Nolan is working on his next epic: Oppenheimer. The film has a stacked cast and revolves around J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist behind the creation of the atomic bomb. Cillian Murphy is set to portray the infamous scientist, and he will be reuniting with Nolan after the pair worked together on Batman Begins (2005). While sitting down with Entertainment Weekly, Nolan revealed how he convinced Murphy to audition as Batman, which went terribly wrong.
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You would be hard-pressed to find anyone, not a Christopher Nolan fan. The man is a visionary who has delivered epics like Inception, Dunkirk, and his Batman trilogy, including Batman Begins, The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
Batman Begins is where Nolan and Murphy worked together and what started their relationship in the oddest of ways. Nolan recalls the first time they worked together. Nolan states, “When we had our first conversation, I think both of us knew that you weren’t going to wind up playing Batman.”
Despite Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy generally knowing he would not be Batman, he had Murphy test screen for the part anyway. Though it might sound a bit cruel, it was for a deeper reason, which just speaks to the genius of Nolan’s filmmaking.
“But I really wanted to get on set with you, I wanted to get you on film. We did those screen tests very elaborately, on 35mm, with a little set. There was just an electric atmosphere in the crew when you started to perform,” he added.
Nolan had forced the executives from Warner Bros. to come to watch Murphy, which included him reading for the part of Bruce Wayne and Batman. The reasoning behind that was that they had already decided that Christian Bale had the part, though Nolan immediately asked that Murphy be considered for the part of Scarecrow.
“Okay, Christian Bale is Batman, but what about Cillian to play Scarecrow,” Nolan added. The screen test was all it took to convince the rest of the production to give Cillian Murphy the part of Dr. Jonathan Crane, AKA Scarecrow. Though the villains had primarily been a bit zanier, with Jack Nicholson and Jim Carrey taking on the roles of The Joker and The Riddler, Murphy’s dark portrayal of Crane was good enough for him to appear in all three films.
“It was clear to me from the beginning that I wasn’t Batman material,” Murphy said to corroborate the story from Nolan. He also indicated that the part might have been minor, but he would jump at the chance to work with Christopher Nolan.
“I have always said, publicly and privately, to Chris that if I’m available and you want me to be in a movie, I’m there. I don’t really care about the size of the part,” Murphy added.
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Cillian Murphy also indicated he was biding his time until he was given the opportunity to lead one of Nolan’s films, which is Oppenheimer. Murphy was the Scarecrow in his Batman trilogy, and he appeared as Fischer in Inception, but now he is set to lead an A-list cast that includes Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Jack Quaid, Rami Malek, and many more.
Not many people would be happy about being forced to bomb an audition, but it did lead to Cillian Murphy portraying one of the most iconic Batman villains.
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