In a recent interview with The Telegraph, the 52-year-old director confirmed that his eldest daughter makes a brief yet explosive cameo in the film opposite its lead, Cillian Murphy.
According to Nolan, he made a spur-of-the-moment decision to cast Flora Nolan, 22, in "Oppenheimer" while she was visiting him on set during filming. Flora, a member of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts class of 2024, previously played an extra in his 2014 film "Interstellar."
"We needed someone to do that small part of a somewhat experimental and spontaneous sequence," he said. But this was no run-off-the-mill extra work.
As The Telegraph's Robbie Collin noted, Flora plays a nameless woman who gets the "flesh" on her face "flayed" off in a dream that Murphy's titular character has.
Despite the gruesome visuals, Nolan had nothing but praise for his daughter. "It was wonderful to just have her sort of roll with it," he added.
Pressed by Collin to elaborate on what it was like to stage her death, the director said he hoped he wasn't being made to sound like filmmaker Michael Powell, who controversially cast his 9-year-old son as a child-version of a serial killer and himself as the boy's dictatorial father in the 1960 film, "Peeping Tom."
"But yes, I mean, gosh, you're not wrong. Truthfully, I try not to analyse my own intentions. But the point is that if you create the ultimate destructive power it will also destroy those who are near and dear to you," Nolan said. "So I suppose this was my way of expressing that in what, to me, were the strongest possible terms."