Matt Damon negotiated with his wife during a couples therapy session that he was taking a break from work unless Christopher Nolan called. Nolan would then call Damon to be part of Oppenheimer’s cast.
“This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true,” Damon said during an appearance EW’s Around the table. “Not to get too personal, I had negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off.”
Damon recalled being in Nolan’s Interstellar and said the director “put me on ice for a couple of movies, so I wasn’t in the rotation.”
“I actually traded in couples therapy, that’s a true story, the only caveat to my time off was if Chris Nolan called,” Damon continued. “That’s without knowing if he was working on anything or not because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my house.
In Oppenheimer, Damon plays Leslie Groves, the general who oversaw the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer’s cast also includes Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh, among others. Oppenheimer hits theaters July 21.
