It’s hard to believe we’re on the precipice of Barbenheimer. For a year now we’ve talked about Barbie and Oppenheimer both coming out on July 21, 2023, as if it were the Mayan-calendar-prophesied movie release date to end all others. The actors are now on strike, but Matt Damon is taking one for the team and made sure to include some dishy personal gossip in an interview recorded before the strike took effect. Speaking alongside director Chris Nolan and costars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr. to Entertainment Weekly, Matt shared a backstory to his involvement in the project, and I’m sure his wife is just thrilled about it:
Matt Damon likes to stay busy.
Over the last couple of years, the actor has starred in Air (which he also produced), The Last Duel (which he produced and co-wrote), and Stillwater, and also made cameo appearances in Thor: Love and Thunder and No Sudden Move. Before Christopher Nolan called Damon to offer him the role of General Leslie Groves in his historical drama-thriller Oppenheimer (out July 21), the actor–who previously appeared in Nolan’s 2014 science fiction epic Interstellar–had told his wife, Luciana, that he would take some time off. So how did Damon play the role of Groves in the movie, about “father of the atomic bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer, without breaking his word? Turns out the actor had secured what future generations may well call “the Nolan exemption” in this spousal agreement.
“This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true,” Damon reveals in EW’s Around the Table with Nolan and costars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr. “I had–not to get too personal–negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off. I had been in Interstellar, and then Chris put me on ice for a couple of movies, so I wasn’t in the rotation, but I actually negotiated in couples therapy–this is a true story–the one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called. This is without knowing whether or not he was working on anything, because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my household.”
She may have agreed to a Nolan exemption, but did she agree to living with that mustache?! Ok I am eating this up and I have all sorts of reactions. Matt, honey, this ain’t your first rodeo. You could have easily said “we had agreed that I would take a break but my one caveat was if Chris Nolan called, and he did.” But instead he brings in marriage counseling, and negotiations, and the loaded comment “it was a moment in my household.” Matt and Luciana have been married since 2005, nearly 20 years, so I’m not begrudging the fact that they’re in counseling, that’s a perfectly healthy component of a long-term marriage I’m sure (I’m not, I’m guessing, I speak from no experience). But he still could have kept those parts of the story private, because now I have a cacophony of questions in my head: did Luciana have her own stipulations? Why does Matt not want to be at home–is it a tactic to avoid cleaning up his mess? He said “negotiated extensively” so how many rounds were there? Is there a Ben Affleck clause? And of course, good heavens, am I dying to know what the next round of negotiations look like after this public revelation.
Photos credit: James Warren / Bang Showbiz / Avalon, JPI Studios / Avalon, Faye’s Vision/Cover Images
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