Matt Damon had to negotiate with his wife to work with Christopher Nolan in couples therapy

Matt Damon he doesn’t want to miss any kind of opportunity to work with the director Christopher Nolan and he was willing to put his hiatus from acting and his relationship with his imperiled wife on hold to ensure he could work with Nolan when the opportunity presented itself again.

Damon previously appeared on Nolan’s Interstellar, but if the manager called him again, he didn’t want to have to say no. After appearing in three films in 2021, Damon needed to take a break from acting so he could spend time with his wife and family.

As he and his wife worked out the terms of this break in couples therapy, Damon agreed that he would take a break with one important caveat…if Nolan called him and asked to be in a movie. Not long after, Nolan offered Damon a role in Oppenheimercausing the actor to invoke his clause from therapy.

During an interview with Entertainment Weekly’s Around the TableDamon shared:

“It will seem made up, but it is actually true. I had to – not to get too personal – extensively negotiate with my wife that I was taking time off. I’d been in Interstellar, and then Chris put me on ice for a couple movies, so I wasn’t in the rotation, but I actually negotiated in couples therapy – this is a true story – the only caveat for my time off it was if Chris Nolan called. This without knowing whether or not he was working on something, because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue. And so, that was a moment in my family.

Must have been an interesting conversation with the couples therapist.

Oppenheimer is based on the 2005 book American Prometheus by Kai Bird AND Martin J. Sherwinand follows the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II through the eyes of theoretical physicist and Manhattan Project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The film is the protagonist Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who ran the Manhattan Project that led to the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II. He is joined by Emilia Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, e Robert Downey Jr. such as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.

The film is also the protagonist Florence Pug as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie plays theoretical physicist Edward Teller, Michael Angarano plays Robert Serber, Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence, along with Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Dan DeHaan, DylanArnold, David Krumholtz, Alden EhrenreichAND Matthew Modino.

The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. Oppenheimer is filmed in a combination of IMAX® 65mm and 65mm large format film photography that includes, for the first time ever, sections in IMAX® black and white analog photography.

Oppenheimer will be released in theaters on July 21, 2023.