Florence Pugh on ‘Oppenheimer’: Christopher Nolan Is Master Director

“Working with Christopher Nolan was quite possibly one of the most thrilling experiences in a different way,”

Florence Pugh had an unprecedented experience starring in “Oppenheimer.”

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The 27 year-old Oscar-nominated actress praised director Christopher Nolan during a new BBC Radio 1 interview and cited how the “Dark Knight” filmmaker was a true “professional” in every way.

“Working with Christopher Nolan was quite possibly one of the most thrilling experiences in a different way, partly because he works with professionals. He is a professional,” Pugh said. “But his dedication to the craft of filmmaking and old filmmaking is just magical to watch.”

The “Midsommar” actress continued, “To just watch every single crew member on that set work so hard for him, to get his approval. And not like in a weird way, but like everybody knows who they’re working for and everybody’s proud of being there. Everybody has so much pride in their own work and so what that does is it means that everybody is constantly trying to be better the next day. And I’ve never seen that feeling on set before.”

Pugh called Nolan “just a master” and a great leader on set. “Everybody is wanting to be like, ‘I’m good, let me show you how good I am.’ Even us, you know, we were all there every day, we don’t sit down. That’s another thing, you don’t really sit down, you’re just waiting seeing what you can be told do. It’s very exciting,” Pugh summed up.

The “Don’t Worry Darling” star, who has a slew of projects in the works, recently opened up about deeply immersing herself in her onscreen characters.

“I’ve never had this ever before with any of my characters,” Pugh reflected on leading Ari Aster’s 2019 horror film “Midsommar,” adding, “I’d never played someone that was in that much pain before, and I would put myself in really shitty situations that maybe other actors don’t need to do but I would just be imagining the worst things.”

The “A Good Person” star continued, “Each day the content would be getting more weird and harder to do. I was putting things in my head that were getting worse and more bleak. I think by the end I probably, most definitely abused my own self in order to get that performance.”