“Good Time” and “Uncut Gems” director Benny Safdie expands his acting career with a prominent supporting role in Christopher Nolan‘s “Oppenheimer.” He plays Edward Teller, the real-life theoretical physicist known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” Teller joined Oppenheimer to work on the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, N.M., focusing on nuclear implosion and uranium hydride research. He was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, and had a thick accent, which presented Safdie with one of his biggest acting challenges.
“The accent was something I was so nervous about,” Safdie recently told Vulture. “I remember Chris asking me, ‘How’s the accent coming?’ And I’m just like,‘Oh my God, how am I going to accomplish this?’I didn’t know if he was going to want me to do it. But he sent me all of these interviews and we talked about how Teller speaks and who he is. It was a long process of working together to really nail it down.”
“I remember finally I was like,‘You know what? I could sound crazy, but I don’t care. This is what Teller sounds like and I’m just going to do it,'” Safdie added.“I sent a voice-memo where I just narrated what my breakfast was and how Teller really liked pineapple.”
Because “Oppenheimer” spans several years, Safdie also had to find a way to change his accent as Teller grew older. Screaming ended up being a solution.
“Before each take, I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to yell. I’m going to really break up my vocal cords,'” Safdie told Vulture. “It makes such a big difference. We also came up with this weird laugh-snort that Teller has when Kenneth Branagh is talking and we realize the Germans are behind and we’re ahead of them. Snorting and hitting the leg. We spent so long on that! Just that little snort. You’re not afraid to look stupid in a lot of ways, because when you’re free like that, it’s a fun place to be.”
Another signature part of bringing Teller to life was his eyebrows. Safdie sports some pretty thick brows in the film, which he said Christopher Nolan was adamant about.
“I am proud to say that it’s all my eyebrows,” Safdie said. “Teller had the best eyebrows. Every once in a while I have a straggler that I’ll just pluck out, cause it looks a little too crazy. But Chris said, ‘Don’t do that. Let’s just let it go crazy.’ I had the most insane eyebrows for months and months, and you just had to brush them out and then they shined in all their glory.”
“Oppenheimer” is now playing in theaters nationwide from Universal Pictures.
