An Oppenheimer Accident Left Florence Pugh And Cillian Murphy Naked At The Worst Time

Florence Pugh and Cillian Murphy shared some pretty steamy scenes in "Oppenheimer," Christopher Nolan's historical epic about the titular man who created the atomic bomb. Unfortunately, one of them had an issue during filming ... and it left Murphy and Pugh completely nude while the crew rushed to fix the camera problem at hand.

During a panel discussion about "Oppenheimer" featuring Pugh, Murphy, their co-star Emily Blunt, and actor and moderator Jamie Dornan — which is available on Universal Pictures' awards site — the Oscar-nominated actress revealed that during a scene depicting a tryst between Oppenheimer (Murphy) and his mistress Jean Tatlock (Pugh), the camera stopped functioning. "In the middle of our sex scene, the camera broke. No one knows this, but it did," Pugh told Dornan and Blunt. "Our camera broke when we were both naked, and it was not ideal timing."

Apparently, there weren't a lot of cameras on hand that could replace the malfunctioning one because another possible option was being repaired, so that specific piece of equipment simply had to be fixed. "Cillian and I are in this room together. It's a closed set, so we're both holding our bodies like this," Pugh continued, wrapping her arms around her body as if to shield herself.

At a certain point, Florence Pugh apparently decided to take the lemons she was handed and make some lemonade — and that means she thought she might as well inquire about the camera problem while she and Cillian Murphy were sitting there naked. "I'm like, well, this is my moment to learn. 'So tell me, what's wrong with this camera?'" Pugh said, recalling how she asked the person who arrived to repair the equipment. "You just make your moments. I'm like, 'What's going on with the shutter here, buddy?'"

So what was the problem precisely? Pugh said director Christopher Nolan eventually told her there was an issue with the way the light was framing the scene. Still, she had an excellent attitude about it all.

"It was just crazy that every person on this set was so knowledgeable and was so ready to make this kind of a movie that there was no dull moment. It was all amazing. It felt like we were lucky to be there every second of the day," she recalled fondly.

So who exactly is Jean Tatlock, Florence Pugh's character in "Oppenheimer"? For starters, she's actually a representation of a real person. The real Tatlock was a prominent psychiatrist who aligned herself with the Communist Party as it rose to prominence in the 1930s in America — and the film is pretty faithful in its depiction. Of course, Tatlock also had a long relationship with J. Robert Oppenheimer, including after he married Katherine "Kitty" Puening (played by Emily Blunt in the film).

Thanks to their intimate relationship, Oppenheimer faced questioning by the U.S. government over his potential involvement with the Communist party, and ultimately, Tatlock's phone wires were tapped by the FBI as part of their investigation into the Communist movement as well as Oppenheimer himself. As in the film, Tatlock consumed a number of substances and was discovered by her father partially submerged in her bathtub, with a brief note left behind. Though her family members suspected she had been murdered, her death was ruled a suicide, which weighs heavily on Murphy's Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan's film.

"Oppenheimer," including Tatlock's tragic affair with Oppenheimer, will be streaming on Peacock on February 16.

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