J. Robert Oppenheimer’s grandson, Charles Oppenheimer, is revealing what scene from Christopher Nolan’s film he “definitely would have removed.”
During an interview with Time magazine, published online Tuesday, Charles opened up about what he would have changed in Oppenheimer, which follows the story of his American scientist grandfather and his role in the development of the atomic bomb.
Although he noted that Nolan warned him that there were going to be parts in the movie “that you have to dramatize a bit and parts that are changed,” Charles would have preferred the scene where Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer tried to kill his professor by injecting cyanide into an apple not have been included in the film.
“The part I like the least is this poison apple reference,” he said, due to its historical inaccuracy. But Charles explained that he was previously not pleased with that section in the 2006 biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which is what Nolan’s screenplay is based on.
“If you read American Prometheus carefully enough, the authors say, ‘We don’t really know if it happened,” he said. “There’s no record of him trying to kill somebody. That’s a really serious accusation and it’s historical revision. There’s not a single enemy or friend of Robert Oppenheimer who heard that during his life and considered it to be true.”
Charles said the biography still “summarizes that as Robert Oppenheimer tried to kill his teacher” even though it also acknowledges that there was no historical proof of it happening.
“Sometimes facts get dragged through a game of telephone,” he told the outlet. “In the movie, it’s treated vaguely and you don’t really know what’s going on unless you know this incredibly deep backstory. So it honestly didn’t bother me. It bothers me that it was in the biography with that emphasis, not a disclaimer of, this is an unsubstantiated rumor that we want to put in our book to make it interesting.”
But overall, Charles said he enjoyed some of the dramatizations throughout the film. “As a dramatized representation of the history, it was really largely accurate,” he explained. “There are parts that I disagree with, but not really because of Nolan.”
He also noted that he was invited to visit the set twice while filming and although he “definitely would have removed the apple thing,” he couldn’t imagine “giving advice about movie stuff to Nolan. He’s an expert, he’s the artist, and he’s a genius in this area.”
Oppenheimer is currently playing in theaters.
