I Have So Many Thoughts About Em ily Blunt’s Role in ‘Oppenheimer’

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This Week

I can’t stop thinking about Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer.

I can’t stop crying about Barbie.

I can’t stop raving about the new Real Housewives of New York City.

I can’t stop thinking about aliens.

I can’t stop ranting about these wigs.

My Wife!

It is a story that is foundational to every religious belief that I hold sacred and true, that guides how I live and lead every day. A prophet named Moses (Paltrow-Martin) ascended (the steps of) Mount Sinai (Hospital in New York), where God (Oprah Winfrey) presented him with a tablet (iPad mini) bearing the Ten Commandments.

The list of principles are unimpeachable: Thou shalt have no other God before me, unless she is Beyoncé. Thou shalt not turn into a meeting that could have been an email. Honor thy Daddy (Andy Cohen) and thy Mother (Nicole Kidman). And, of course, the one that is most personal to me: Thou shalt not see any movie that is over two hours long, because there ain’t no reason for that nonsense.

Well, forgive me Daddy, because I’ve been a bad boy forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I saw Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer, in spite of the fact that its runtime is three hours, thus violating a core religious belief. Adding to the heresy: I loved it.

We have several pieces at The Daily Beast’s Obsessed detailing what it is about the film that is so good—read ’em all!—but the thing that I’ve been harping on this past week (beyond, you know, the intense trauma and message of the atomic bomb sequence) is the casting.

Cillian Murphy, a tiny-waisted Irish king with cheekbones that can cut through a movie screen, is exactly who I want to spend three hours staring at in IMAX. Aside from the smattering of big names in the most prominent roles—Robert Downey, Jr., Matt Damon, Florence Pugh—I was obsessed with the endless experience of “hey, it’s that guy, from that thing!” that the film delivered with its parade of familiar character actors in the supporting cast. Mostly, though, I’m fascinated by the casting of Emily Blunt.

Blunt plays Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, the wife of Murphy’s so-called “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer. Kitty is ostensibly the film’s female lead, though still very much a supporting character. In fact, she’s so much of a supporting character, she epitomizes every cliché of the long-suffering wife in an Oscar-baiting film. The underwritten female role in a male-dominated “serious” movie, that a major Hollywood actress is supposed to be satisfied with, despite its meagerness: It’s a long-standing film tradition, but one that, in recent years, has been scrutinized and mocked. (There are some hilarious TikToks skewering these kinds of roles.)

There are few substantial female characters in Oppenheimer, and their material is sorely lacking when compared to what the boys get to do in the movie. Pugh’s entire character arc as Jean Tatlock is to, essentially, flash her boobies three times and then die. (It’s history, not a spoiler.) Olivia Thirlby shows up at the Los Alamos research center and delivers a few ultimately ironic lines about wanting to do more meaningful work, despite being a woman. Inevitable complaints about the presence and portrayal of women in Nolan’s movie are undeniable.

And then there’s the complicated case of Blunt and Kitty. Kitty meets Robert while still married to someone else. They have an affair and, after she gets pregnant, she divorces her third husband to marry Robert (her fourth). From then on, she is devoted to him—whether fiercely or begrudgingly depends on how many refills she’s had of the drink that seems to be permanently glued to her hand. She tolerates the fact that he’s a philandering piece of shit who constantly cheats on her. When his integrity is called into question during a hearing on his possible ties to communism, she insists that he fight—eventually battling on his behalf.

Blunt is one of the most impressive actresses working today, especially when playing emotionally complicated parts that require a nimble juggling of wounded vulnerability and decisive, unflinching power. That she manages both in Oppenheimer is something of a miracle. She makes a meal out of a role that’s a cinematic version of a Fyre Festival snackbox.

Were you hoping for any insight into why Kitty is so devoted to and supportive of Robert? The film’s borderline astonishing adherence to every single stereotype of the aforementioned dutiful wife character means that you don’t get it. Instead, you’re treated to a gauntlet of clichés that Blunt must act her way through. It’s the Greatest Hits, really: There’s a scene where she must silently react while listening to a phone call. There’s a scene where she drunkenly throws a glass at a wall. There’s even a scene where she silently gazes into the distance while bedsheets on a clothing line billow around her, the pinnacle of all potential Wife-in-an-Oscar-Movie scenes. My favorite critique of the role is that Kitty’s “a sentient martini glass.”

But then Blunt and Kitty break out of that mold. There’s a rousing showcase of Blunt’s unique talent near the end of the film, in which Kitty, with a sniper-like precision, exposes the farce of her husband’s—and now her—interrogation. It’s the moment you’ve been waiting the whole film for anyone to do, and it’s especially gratifying that it’s Kitty who does it—and Blunt who executes it so well.

It’s the kind of scene that gets an actress an Oscar nomination, and it very well could get one for Blunt. But should it? It’s almost embarrassing how exactly the role adheres to clichés and stereotypes, to the point that I wondered if we were all being trolled. Blunt, however, manages to be mesmerizing in spite of the material—in her big scene, yes, but also, quite surprisingly, in those eye roll-inducing ones too. It’s an interesting place to come from when endorsing an actor for awards recognition: I can’t believe how ridiculous this role is, but she’s so good that I want her to be nominated anyway.

I’d argue that this could—and maybe should—be Blunt’s fifth nod. Hindsight is 20/20, and we can clearly see now how outrageous it is that she wasn’t nominated for The Devil Wears Prada. At least twice, she’s come close to being nominated after a long awards season—for Young Victoria and Mary Poppins Returns—and I think we really undersell how brilliant her SAG Award-winning work was in A Quiet Place.

Sometimes you’re one cube of cheese a day and a stomach flu away from your goal weight. Sometimes you’re one almond a day away from the greatest role of your career. And sometimes you’re one clichéd, long-suffering wife from the deserved Oscar nod that’s eluded you for decades.

Hi, Kleenex!

Everyone has a Barbie memory. I think that’s the brilliance of Greta Gerwig’s film. Yes, it specifically and cleverly unpacks the complicated legacy of a cultural icon. Yes, it’s very funny. But its comedy and most emotional moments both come from the fact that we all have very deep, often lovely, even more often resentful, and sometimes weird connections to Barbie—and it somehow lets all of those intimate memories sing universally.

The last Barbie I bought is a vintage Rosie O’Donnell Barbie, procured from an antique store in Massachusetts while I was visiting last spring for a wedding. I don't remember my first, because I probably stole it from my sister. That is, until my dad caught wise and brought me a Barbie home as his “did you get me a present???” gift from his business trips, too.

That’s probably why I cried a lot while watching Barbie: a movie about a silly doll that carries a lot of emotional weight. People have been having strong reactions to the film. They are reacting to America Ferrera’s monologue about womanhood and how resonant (or not resonant enough) it is; they are reacting to the beautiful montages that stir up memories of how important or not play was in our lives; the comedy skewering Mattell is either brilliant or complicit in the film’s capitalism; the patriarchy is either confirmed or destroyed through the Kens and Allan.

When was the last time something as fun as this Barbie phenomenon—you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the person alone on the subway who clearly dressed up with a group of friends but whose stop was after theirs—also actually meant something?
Maybe that’s why all those conservatives are pissing their diapers. This movie and the public reaction to it is invalidating all their made-up dog whistles and fictional scare-tactic talking points about culture’s woke doom, because people are openly embracing their emotional and personal stake in what is their reality—one in which this movie, again, means something. Barbie and Barbie, it turns out, mean something to all of us.

Good Apples

I am never happier than when I am watching The Real Housewives of New York City.

That being such an intrinsic part of my personality and well-being became complicated for a while, as the show’s original cast spiraled problematically and suddenly. It was as if a windstorm had whipped up the mountains of garbage bags that stack on a Manhattan street into a highly upsetting tornado. Still, I cherished those trash bags. They were like family.

The reboot of RHONY with an entire new cast—a different brand of trash bags, like switching from Hefty to Glad—is so different from what I used to embrace and cherish. But I’m already loving it. A Sunday night in which queer icon Jenna Lyons, in spite of her shyness, can’t help herself but candidly forbid a castmate from wearing conflicting fashion labels on her outfit to dinner? Fabulous.

We Come in Peace

What celebrity should we send to meet the alien delegation? My mind is reeling. Do we send them the best we have? Oprah and Gayle, block your calendars. Do we really send them the best we have? By that, I mean Tiffany “New York” Pollard and Drew Barrymore. Or do we offer up a sacrifice? Ron DeSantis and the guy behind that “Liza Minnelli Outlives” Twitter account, you busy?

This Is a Crime

I don’t care how accurate this is to the subjects of the film, HOW DARE YOU put these wigs on my four husbands?!

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed

People who saw Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day had the best moviegoing weekend of their lives, and we talked to them. Read more.

What’s the biggest problem with Oppenheimer? Everyone’s too damn sexy. Read more.

Adam Rippon made LGBT history at the Winter Olympics. Now he’s on Mars. Read more.

How To with John Wilson: The most profound show you will ever see whose premiere asks the question, “Where do I go to take a shit?” (Fri. on HBO)

Physical: Rose Byrne has been giving one of TV’s best performances for three seasons now, will you finally pay attention? (Wed. on Apple TV+)

Harley Quinn: It is confounding how everyone in the universe isn’t talking about how great this series is. (Now on Max)

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