#small things like these | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

denimbex1986 · 10 months

Text

'If Peaky Blinders made the Irish actor a household name, will Christopher Nolan’s nuclear blockbuster send him into the stratosphere? He talks about extreme weight loss, hating school and why his next character won’t be a smoker.

Cillian Murphy is struggling with what he can and can’t say about his title role in Oppenheimer, the latest Christopher Nolan epic, such is the secrecy surrounding this film. Murphy is under “strict instructions” not to talk about the content. Which is awkward when you’ve flown to his home in Ireland to interview him specifically about playing the physicist who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb, later detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s not clear who issued these instructions. Nolan? The studio? The US government? All I know is that as well as Murphy being gagged by hefty NDAs, I am not allowed to see it (“bit unfortunate”, he concedes).

So, yes, here we sit in an empty upstairs room of a restaurant near his house in Monkstown, Dublin, working out how to do this. The room is dark, the sun shining through a solitary Velux lighting his features like a Géricault. The only background noise is the low hum of a wine refrigerator. Murphy loathes interviews, looks visibly tortured at points. But he relaxes when I ask if he’s pleased with Oppenheimer. “I am, yeah,” he says. “I don’t like watching myself – it’s like, ‘Oh, fucking hell’ – but it’s an extraordinary piece of work. Very provocative and powerful. It feels sometimes like a biopic, sometimes like a thriller, sometimes like a horror. It’s going to knock people out,” he adds. “What [Nolan] does with film, it fucks you up a little bit.”

Nolan wouldn’t disagree. The director recently told Wired magazine that some of those who’d seen it were left “absolutely devastated … they can’t speak”. Which sounds like a bad thing, but is related perhaps to the thought of the 214,000 Japanese people, overwhelmingly civilians, who lost their lives when the bombs were dropped. Kai Bird, the historian who co-authored American Prometheus, the 2008 biography of J Robert Oppenheimer upon which the film is based, said he was still “emotionally recovering” from seeing the film, clarifying that it was “a stunning artistic achievement”.

Murphy’s portrayal is said to be astonishing (“Oscar-worthy” is the buzz). This is not unbelievable. While Hollywood might not know him as a leading man, this quietly intense actor has long been celebrated in the UK and Ireland, most notably for his nine-year stint as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders. When he first appeared on our screens, looking like a renaissance painting of Saint Sebastian – chiselled head contrasting with translucent blue eyes – it was impossible not to be distracted. He appeared first on stage in Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs, then the screen adaptation. Then 28 Days Later; Intermission; Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Previous collaborations with Nolan include the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and Dunkirk, “significant milestones in my career,” he says, adding that Nolan “might be the perfect director”.

It was Nolan’s wife, the producer Emma Thomas, who called Murphy one afternoon at the home he shares with his wife, artist Yvonne McGuinness, and two teenage sons. Nolan doesn’t actually have a telephone, or an email, or computer for that matter: “He’s the most analogue individual you could possibly encounter.” So, Emma said Chris would like a word and passed the receiver, then the director came on the line. “Cillian, I’d love you to play the lead in this new thing,” he said. Murphy tries to recreate his response to this news. “I was lost for words. But thrilled. Like beyond thrilled.” It is characteristic of Murphy that the modulation of his voice barely changes as he expresses this. He was so stunned, he had to sit down. “Your mind explodes.”

In the absence of the three-hour feature, I scrutinise Oppenheimer’s three-minute trailer. It’s a rush of snapshots against the crackling of a Geiger counter. There’s Murphy, short back and sides, lifting 1940s eye goggles; blue and red atoms coming at him fast; orange light; white light; blackout; silence. Massive explosion against the backdrop of space. Overlaid is Murphy’s narration, “We’re in a race against the Nazis / and I know what it means / if the Nazis have a bomb.” There’s Matt Damon looking porky as army general Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project: “They have a 12-month head start.” Murphy, pointing with cigarette: “18.”

He has put back on some of the weight he lost for the part, I’m relieved to see; his skin isn’t quite so taut over his skull and there are freckles over those eagle-wing cheekbones. He was determined to nail the scientist’s silhouette “with the porkpie hat and the pipe”, testing himself to see how little he could eat. “You become competitive with yourself a little bit which is not healthy. I don’t advise it.” He won’t say how many kilograms he lost, or what food the nutritionist told him to cut out. NDA? “Ach, no. I don’t want it to be, ‘Cillian lost x weight for the part’.”

Then again, the hurtling speed at which Nolan worked, crisscrossing the US, made it easy to skip meals. Murphy began to forget about food in the same way he began to forget about sleep. “It’s like you’re on this fucking train that’s just bombing. It’s bang, bang, bang, bang. You sleep for a few hours, get up, bang it again. I was running on crazy energy; I went over a threshold to where I was not worrying about food or anything. I was so in it, a state of hyper …” he gropes for the word, “hyper something. But it was good because the character was like that. He never ate.” Oppenheimer subsisted on little more than Chesterfield cigarettes and double-strength martinis, rims dipped in lime. “Cigarettes and pipes. He would alternate between the two. That’s what did for him in the end,” Murphy adds, a nod to the scientist’s death from cancer in 1967. “I’ve smoked so many fake cigarettes for Peaky and this. My next character will not be a smoker. They can’t be good for you. Even herbal cigarettes have health warnings now.”

I raise method acting and Murphy tilts his head and frowns. “Method acting is a sort of … No,” he says, firm but with a half smile. Oppenheimer had many defining characteristics, not least walking on the balls of his feet and a vocal tic that sounded like nim-nim-nim, but Murphy didn’t want to do an impression. Nolan was obsessed with the Brillo-texture hair, so they spent “a long time working on hair”. And the voice. The real question for Murphy was what combination – ambition, madness, delusion, deep hatred of the Nazi regime? – allowed this theoretical physicist to agree to an experiment he knew could obliterate humankind. “He was dancing between the raindrops morally. He was complex, contradictory, polymathic; incredibly attractive intellectually and charismatic, but,” he decides, “ultimately unknowable.

“Listen, it’s not like a spoiler,” he says, checking himself before he leans in, “but there are incidents in his early life that were quite worrying; very erratic.” They are in the film and the book, he steers. I suspect he is referring to Oppenheimer’s postgrad at Cambridge in 1926, when he placed a poisoned apple on the desk of a tutor towards whom he harboured complicated feelings of inadequacy and jealousy. Arguably, this was attempted murder. But Oppenheimer’s rich New York parents rushed in to bundle him into psychoanalysis. He was diagnosed with “dementia praecox”, a term describing symptoms associated with schizophrenia.

Murphy likes these complex characters; they’re his meat. People that don’t necessarily follow the – yawn – traditional transformative arc of storytelling. Not villains, exactly (although he’s played a few, including Scarecrow in Dark Knight and Jackson Rippner in Red Eye): “Villains are good if they’re well written, but if it’s one note or a trope, then they are dull.” He likes a script to stretch leisurely into all corners of the human condition, “all the shades”. At the same time, you have to understand his exceptional ability to portray interiority, physically manifesting intense human emotion without a word, radiating fierce, consuming energy. Which he does today, actually, when I stray off track.

Although Nolan is usually, shall we say, antiseptic in his approach to romance, Oppenheimer represents a significant shift. He told Wired the love story aspect “is as strong as I’ve ever done”. It features prolonged full nudity for Murphy and Florence Pugh, who plays Oppenheimer’s ex-fiancee, as well as sex, and there are complicated scenes with Emily Blunt, who plays his wife, “that were pretty heavy”. Murphy turns coy: “I’m under strict instructions not to give away anything.”

He asks if I’ve heard of chemistry tests. “They put two actors in a room to see if there’s any spark, and have all the producers and director at a table watching. I don’t know what metric they use, and it seems so outrageously silly, but sometimes you get a chemistry and nobody knows why.” This is a roundabout way of saying his scenes with Blunt and Pugh conjure this magic. His established bond with Blunt (they co-starred in A Quiet Place II) meant “the audience gets something for free”, he says. “You can be immediately vulnerable and open, and try stuff. There were moments where I remember saying, ‘I couldn’t have done that if it wasn’t with you.’”

Murphy, 47, grew up the eldest of four in Cork. His father was a civil servant, his mother a French teacher. They were a middle-class family, musical; his father “can pick up any instrument”, his brother played piano, and they regularly got stuck into “traditional Irish sessions”. Bookshelves were stuffed with literature, the radio often on, the “shitty” TV set not so much. Home life was busy but his parents taught him French and Irish, and sent him to an all-boys academic, rugby-playing private school. “I got all the education” he says, drily.

The story of how much he disliked the Presentation Brothers College, the hard-drinking masculine emphasis, how he found solace playing guitar in a band, is much rehearsed and he says today he doesn’t want “to slag the school off. I hear it’s great now.” Something about this experience seems nonetheless unsettling. He had one friend, who is still his best friend, “so I wasn’t, like, an outcast”. He played rugby for the first couple of years, but abandoned it “because everyone was all of a sudden towering over me.” Was it an unhappy time? He shifts. “It was OK. I was a bit of a messer, like I’d get in trouble and say nothing. It wasn’t the ideal school for me.”

He enrolled in and dropped out of a law degree at University College Cork, which created some friction with his parents (when I ask if his own sons will go to university in Dublin, he says, “Whatever they want”). He continued with the band, his first creative love but the one that got away. When they were offered a contract with Acid Jazz records, he turned it down for a number of reasons, he says, crucially that he didn’t feel good enough. He still writes and plays at home but, no, you won’t be hearing any of his recordings, ever, he says.

It’s a funny thing talking to Murphy. He’s at once garrulous (on the craft, or literature, or ideas) and reticent (pretty much anything else). I sense in previous interviews that he skates over issues close to his heart – such as the expression of emotion in Ireland and the need to teach empathy in schools. But when I try to drill in to these topics, get to the root, he clams shut, emitting energy like a nuclear reactor.

Later, in a different context, he will tell me a truth: “I’m stubborn and lacking in confidence, which is a terrible combination. I don’t want to put anything out that I don’t think is excellent.” But he clearly hates the pantomime of publicity, asking why I am returning to certain topics and repeating lines I’ve read elsewhere. I can almost see him at home with its views towards the Irish Sea, complaining to his wife as they tuck into supper: “Another one, asking the same fucking questions.”

If he could get out of going to Cannes, of standing on red carpets, dressed as is his habit for a funeral, hair shellacked, hands in pockets; if he could turn his back on the coloured-foam mics thrust in his face, he would. He really would. No, it dawns on him now, there’s something even worse than the red carpet; there’s the talkshow rounds. The very word “talkshow” comes out of him like a pain from his ribcage, as if the parcelling out of amuse-bouche anecdotes, offering them up to the forced laughter of that false god of show business, the studio audience, is in itself the most cheapening experience known to mankind.

“I do them because you’re contractually obliged to. I just endure them. I’ve always found it difficult. I’ve said this so many, many times.” Then there’s the double wince of realising that, yes, he’s done it again. He’s laid into the industry that feeds him. His hands raise slowly in surrender. “I want to just caveat this by saying, I’m so privileged. I’m so happy to be doing what I love. I’m really lucky. But I don’t enjoy the personality side of being an actor. I don’t understand why I should be entertaining and scintillating on a talkshow. I don’t know why all of a sudden that’s expected of me. Why?”

There’s an awkward silence. I say that he reminds me of Naomi Osaka, the tennis player who refused to talk to journalists after the French Open in 2021. He says he feels “100%” sympathy with her, “because why should she have to perform?” Then he relents. “But I get it. I get it’s a kind of ecosystem where the film feeds the publicity which feeds the talkshows which goes back and feeds the film, so, like, that’s how it works. I suppose I’m just not good at it. At interviews, at this stuff,” he gestures at me. He says after he leaves me today he’ll be going down the stairs thinking of all the things he’s said and worrying it’s come across all wrong. “Do you know what Sam Beckett said? ‘I have no views to inter.’ I love that. That should be the interview.”

We return to his art, the tension falls away and he’s back to his charming self, charged air evaporating. Since Oppenheimer, he’s also wrapped Small Things Like These, an adaptation of Claire Keegan’s brilliant novella set in 1985 in a small Irish town on the edge of which is a convent and “laundry”. Murphy is a huge fan of Keegan. He remembers reading her 2010 novel Foster on a train and having to pull his hoodie over his face because he was crying so hard. Anyway, he’d wanted to work with the Peaky Blinders director Tim Mielants and they were throwing ideas around in his sitting room when Murphy’s wife suggested Small Things. “No, there’s no way,” Murphy said. “That’s going to be gone already.” But when he called the agent, he found it was available. “I went, ‘No, you’ve got to be fucking kidding.’” Murphy pitched the idea to Matt Damon, who has set up a studio with Ben Affleck. “From there it all just happened really quickly.”

Murphy plays Bill Furlong who, funnily enough, is a man of few words. Keegan’s light-touch writing is everything he loves in art – the sense that you are not being bashed over the head by an idea. That’s how he tries to act, he adds. “I’m always trying to cut lines in scenes, because I feel like you can transmit it. Like when you see a person on a train thinking, or driving a car, and you are purely observing someone and feeling the energy that is vibrating from them. That’s the sort of acting I love. In a lot of film and television, they want to cut those bits to go to the action. I like films that pose the big questions and then leave it to the audience.” Perhaps this is at the heart of his reticence in interviews? That he doesn’t feel the need to explain.

He still finds it “nuts” that the last of the Magdalene laundries closed in 1996, that it was illegal to buy condoms in Ireland until 1985, that divorce was made legal only in 1996. He remembers vividly thousands of people still going to see moving statues in Cork when he was growing up. “Crazy. But, like, how far the country has come since then, we’re so socially advanced now compared with where we were. But you must look back. And art is a better way of doing that than reading all these reports [into the laundries].” (Afterwards, he emails me: “The nation is actually dealing with an unresolved collective trauma. Who knows how long this will take to heal, but I feel strongly that art, film and literature can help with that process. It’s a kinder and gentler sort of therapy. I hope that our movie can help with that in its own little way.”)

Because he’s a nice man, because he doesn’t want me to feel bad about our encounter, and because he’s generous and hospitable, Murphy finishes by telling me some of the best places to visit in Ireland. He and his family are staying here for the summer. They’ve had it with air travel and his home town of Cork is only a couple of hours away. He supplies me with other recommendations: a great book he’s just read, Brian, by Jeremy Cooper, oh, and there’s the Francis Bacon studio exhibition I should catch on my way out.

But before I go, what has he learned from playing Oppenheimer? Foremost, he says, that scientists think differently. He knew this already from playing physicist Robert Capa in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) and hanging out in Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, for research. “I had dinner with all these geniuses. I’ll never understand quantum mechanics, but I was interested in what science does to their perspective.” He sought their opinions on subjects that matter – love, politics, our place in the universe, “infinity, or whatever the fuck. Because they have a completely different way of taking in information than we do. I remember one scientist saying, ‘I don’t believe in love. It’s a biological phenomenon, the exchange of hormones between the female and the male. That’s all. Love is a nonsense.’” Murphy taps the table with his hand. “I couldn’t go along with that, obviously.”

166 notes · View notes

queenshelby · 9 months

Text

The Fourth Season (Rewritten)

Part Two: First Day Blues

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Warning: Religious and Anti-Religious Themes, Mild Smut, Sex Scene

Previous Parts: 1;

Day One

You slowly rolled over as the alarm from your phone started to increase in volume and then you groaned as you sat up, your hair especially wild this morning.

You sat there not exactly excited to be up at this hour, but then you knew that today was the day your life would change forever.

Reaching high above yourself, you stretched, feeling the pop and creak of your bones, which was something unusual for you and probably due to the fact that your new living arrangements were somewhat strange for you still.

Just two months ago, you separated from your husband and high-school sweetheart James and moved back into your parents’ house in Cork before embarking on your new acting journey.

You were now staying in Wexford to film a movie called “Small Things Like These” and since this was your first movie role, you were rather nervous about it. Thus, you didn’t sleep well which was pretty much what happened whenever you were placed into unfamiliar surroundings and the last two nights were somewhat uneasy for you.

The fact that your ex was working on set with you did not help either. He was in charge of logistics and placed you into a small unit with two other cast members named Lorraine and Emma respectively.

Being around strangers, however, didn’t bother you and after you hopped out of bed, you started about your morning routine, bounding across the tiny apartment, putting together a bag that would be needed for the day.

‘Are you ready? And excited?’ your new roommate Emma asked and, after taking one final step in front of your mirror, you nodded.

‘As ready as I can be’ you said before you took in a deep breath and, together with Emma, you walked out the front door of your apartment which was conveniently located right next to where the film crew had set up camp.

During your short walk downstairs, Emma tried to talk to you, but you were too nervous to respond. You struggled to focus and you could not fight the urge to start humming to yourself as you reflected on things including your separation from James after a total of eight years.

***Flashback***

Two months ago, James admitted to infidelity which occurred when he was working on a set in the US and this mishap ultimately cost him his marriage.

You told him that it was over and, since he was the one with the higher income between you both, you decided to move out and leave him with the house you shared in Cork.

At the time, your parents were supportive of your decision, thinking that you simply needed a break but when they learned that you engaged a solicitor to handle your divorce, all hell broke loose.

As such, during the past two months, you were dragged through the so called “process” the church envisaged for members of your congregation and since both your families were strictly catholic, you had little but no choice than to attend numerous counselling sessions with James.

Thus, you sat down with the monsignor and a counsellor of your church on three separate occasions and every single time James repented and thought that you would forgive him for his indiscretions. According to the counsellor, it would have been the reasonable thing to do, but for you, it was not.

You told James to “go to hell” in no uncertain terms and this caused a shitstorm like you had never seen before.

Your parents were outraged by your attitude towards the church and your beloved husband and the fact that you took up a role in this upcoming movie made matters even worse for you and your family as the movie itself criticised the catholic church and their past actions.

Of course, for James to work on set and for you taking the role, were two entirely different things, which just highlighted again the double standards imposed by your kin and it were exactly those double standards you could no longer accept.

Thus, you applied to the courts for divorce and you most certainly took the role which you knew would change your career forever, seeing that this was a movie produced by two famous actors.

By this time, you had spent all your days learning and practicing your lines. You were sent your scripts and read them every day, over and over again, and soon began to realise that, what was expected of you, was much more than you had anticipated.

Amongst the dialogue and acting out different kinds of emotions, there were two intimate scenes you had to participate in and, in one of those, you would be almost completely naked. All of the scenes were with Cillian Murphy whose wife you had to portray in the movie and, unbeknownst to you, when you signed up, these scenes were scripted entirely at the discretion of the screenwriter to gain more interest from the audience.

Given your lack of sexual experience, this was something that concerned you. You had only ever been with James and your sex life had been rather vanilla to say the least. Nonetheless, you tried to get into character for the role and considered your own sexuality and femininity some more. You wasted a good eight years with your husband of being boring and unadventurous and, now, this had to change. You at least needed to learn how to flirt and be seductive and, sure enough, your best friend Siobhan, who lived in Dublin, gave you some good pointers.

The role required you to be stunning, to be open, and have the body language of a woman in control of her own emotions. This clearly wasn’t you, so you had some learning to do.

According to the script, you were the one who needed to lead at least one of the scenes now scripted and this was something you were unsure about. How, on earth, could you do this with someone like Cillian Murphy? By what you have seen of his work, he was an incredibly talented actor. He was much more experienced than you and he was also twenty years older than you and, yet, you had to lead the scene? Seriously?

***End of Flashback***

Making a quick right, you walked straight onto set with Emma. It was her first day too but, unlike you, she had worked with Cillian and some of the others before and thus was not completely overwhelmed by all the cameras and strangers.

‘Y/N, Emma, welcome’ a blonde woman by the name of Lorraine said to you and, just as you reached for her hand to shake it, the director, Tim, came flying by and pulled you aside.

‘You are early. Good’ he said before telling you that Lorraine, who happened to be Cillian’s personal assistant, would be looking after your schedule as well which, according to him, had just changed due to an equipment break down on set three.

‘Okay, right’ you panicked while Lorraine was flicking through her notes in a haste. Everyone seemed to have been stressed out that day because of the technical issues on set and Lorraine was no exception.

‘What scene is up first then? you thus enquired carefully after waiting patiently until, suddenly another man appeared and hurried you along.

‘We will start with scene four, then move to scene eleven and then, this afternoon, we will shoot scene thirty’ he told you and you were lucky that he handed you a running sheet as, otherwise, you would have gotten rather confused by now.

‘Scene thirty? Today?’ you asked with some confusion and, whilst you knew that the scenes for the movie were to be filmed out of order, this scene itself made you panic.

‘Yes. At 3 o’clock’ Tim, the director, then said before taking off again in order to deal with the camera issues on hand.

‘Dear god, they are throwing you right into the deep end, don’t they?’ Emma observed as she looked at your running sheet and saw that scene thirty was an intimate one with Cillian.

‘I am not prepared for this’ you pointed out to her anxiously especially since you have not even met your co-star yet but Emma reassured you that you would be fine.

‘No one ever is but Cillian is easy to work with. You will be fine’ Emma then reassured you, which is when Lorraine made a somewhat inappropriate joke.

‘I am sure some of the other cast members would happily trade places with you’ she teased before pulling you along and giving you a calm and relaxing stroll through the street following which you spent some more time rehearsing your lines.

An hour later…

Your first scene was with Emma herself who played one of your daughters and, even though Emma was older than you, the make-up department did a fantastic job in making you look somewhat ancient.

This scene itself was easy to film. It took less than three takes and both, the director and Cillian, who had also stepped on to set a few minutes ago, were impressed by your efforts.

“I can see that you are doing well” Cillian said as he greeted you and his demur most certainly put you at ease. He appeared to be so comfortable even if surrounded by all these cameras and this really impressed you and calmed you down.

“It was an easy scene” you told him almost shyly before the director called you both. You had literally no time to chat until you were up, filming your second scene with the man himself.

This scene was more dialogue heavy but you were convincing and passionate nonetheless and, just as you filmed the end of this particular scene, Emma still watched you quietly and smiled.

She acted like a big sister, taking you under her wing and her presence clearly calmed you down as well.

After about six takes, Tim and the others were happy with your work and praised you again. According to them, six takes for something like this was not a lot and you appreciated their kind words.

After you were done with the scene, you took a break and spent some more time with Emma, following which you were sent to the dressing rooms.

You had to get changed for your next scene, which was the rather raunchy scene between your character and Cillian’s character and, whilst there was not much dialogue in this scene, it was the scene that concerned you the most.

You were meant to lead this scene and, by this point, you had barely met the man who the scene was with. Cillian and you only exchanged a total of five sentences which, in your opinion, was not enough in order to get comfortable around him without wearing any clothes.

An hour later…

Luckily for you, you had waxed your legs and every other part of your body just two days ago and yet, when you sat down and a tall woman applied your make up, she still found a hair or two which she plugged away.

Unlike before when you were wearing somewhat ugly brown clothes for your scenes, this time around, you were sitting there in beige underwear while being assessed by the staff and, quickly, a few scars and blemishes were patched up with some foundation.

You were then given some lingerie which was raunchier than anything else you had ever worn before. It took your breath away and you felt incredibly vulnerable when you put it on. On top, you had to wear a woollen cardigan and you were also given some suspenders to put on which you knew your co-star would have to take off slowly.

‘Looks great. We are ready, I think’ the make-up artist eventually said and, out of respect for Cillian, you quickly brushed your teeth before having your lipstick topped up.

Regardless of all the preparation and your deep breathing techniques, you were out of your depth with a scene like this and, when you first walked onto the so called ‘closed’ set dressed in nothing more than a cardigan and underwear, you began to fidget a little.

You were the first one there and sat down in the area indicated for you. It was a tiny bed in the middle of a room which was said to be inside the main characters’ house. There were no windows, but several drapes which divided this part of the set from the rest of the building.

Eventually, Tim the director joined you and so did a camera man, followed by your co-star, Cillian and the crew’s intimacy co-ordinator shortly thereafter.

‘Hey’ Cillian said quietly and you could see that this was as at least a little awkward for him too. ‘Are you alright? You look nervous” he then asked while taking a seat next to you and you carefully bit your lip and stammered out a response.

‘Yes, for a matter of fact, I am nervous. This is my first day on set and I didn’t expect to film a scene like this quite so soon” you admitted while assessing your partner inadvertently as he wore nothing but a worn pair of brown trousers.

“Yeah, timing is not on your side, is it?” Cillian chuckled before apologising for the change in schedule which, you knew, he had nothing to do with, and just as you both sat there, making small talk, the director and intimacy co-coordinator came to see you both.

‘Now, this is what I need from you both’ the director began to say before explaining the scene to you.

According to Tim, it was you who had to take control while , yet, Cillian was to remove your cardigan, suspenders and bra. Tim also explained to Cillian where to place his arm so that your breasts would not be visible on camera before the intimacy co-ordinator addressed your comfortableness level with this kind of scene.

‘We know that Cillian is used to being naked on set but, to you, this is probably something new and my word of advice is to ignore the fact that we are here. You can improvise on the lines and we will shoot the scene in three steps, giving you a break in between’ Tim then furthermore explained and, with that, you nervously nodded before Cillian and you both waited for everyone to get into place.

***

Just as Tim was about to call action however, the team was interrupted as James barged on to scene, relaying yet another issue on set two.

“You cannot just barge in here. This is a closed set” the intimacy co-ordinator said somewhat angrily as James was standing there now, talking to both, Tim and Cillian, while you tried to cover up your semi naked body with the tiny cardigan you had.

“I am sure it is fine. He is her husband” Tim said, dismissing the fact that James saw you like this and you felt it be necessary to correct him.

“We are separated actually, but I am still fine” you pointed out, causing Cillian to look at you with some surprise before pulling his large jacket off the chair behind the camera and handing it to you.

“I am sorry” he then said and you were not quite sure what Cillian was apologising for, but nodded nonetheless before the three of them wrapped up their discussions.

***

After they were done and everyone was back in situ, the director outlined the scene to you once more and, after Tim indicated to the team that everyone was ready now, you took off Cillian’s jacket and placed it aside.

‘Are you alright?’ Cillian then asked and you immediately snapped out of your somewhat intrusive thoughts about how to pull this off.

‘Just nervous. Sorry’ you admitted shyly in response and Cillian smiled.

‘Like I said, there is no need to. We all dislike these kind of scenes. Just follow the directions of the crew and you will be fine. I promise’ he then reassured you and you nodded all while some sweat was building up on your forehead.

‘Okay, I will try. I am ready I think’ you then said, causing Cillian to nod and, whilst it was obvious to him that you had not done this kind of scene before, he remained calm and patient.

‘Me too’ Cillian then said, shortly after which Tim called “action” and you began your dialogue.

Cillian’s presence, however, threw you off guard completely and you needed at least three goes to even get your lines right at the beginning of the scene before you could even move on to the next part, which is where you were wrapping your arms around Cillian’s body.

You did, however, get there in the end and the director called cut. You took a breather and then commenced part two of the scene, which was also the longest and most uncomfortable part you.

‘I don’t know what to tell them. It has been fifteen years…” Cillian began to say with heavy Irish accent as part of the dialogue and you pulled him in tight.

‘You don’t tell them anything and, at least for now, forget about!” you said as you felt the bulging muscles of Cillian’s core.

“I am trying Eileen. I am trying, alright?” he asked and, just as you took in a deep breath and inhaled the fresh scent that accompanied him, you began to stammer.

‘Cut’ the director called and you quickly apologised.

‘You weren’t wrong when you said that you were nervous’ Cillian acknowledged and you wanted to responded with a snappy ‘duh’. Of course you were nervous. You were there, with a stranger, hugging his naked body.

‘I am sorry’ you told him and, just as the director gave you both another quick break, Cillian had a chat with you about the scene.

‘Take a deep breath and try to think about being somewhere else, with someone else. A park maybe, with someone you are attracted to…’ Cillian began to say before giving you some pointers on how to feel comfortable, naked, in front of the camera. But what he didn’t know was that the cameras weren’t what threw you off. It was him. You felt some strange kind of attraction towards this man all of a sudden and even though he was twenty years older than you. What he also did not know was that he was only the second man who had ever seen you like this and you knew that, within minutes, he would be taking off your cardigan, unclasping your bra and kiss you. This, too, was new for you and you began to panic.

‘A park? You want me to imagine being naked in a park, kissing someone I am attracted to?’ you then eventually asked him and laughed to cover up your nervousness and this, too, made Cillian laugh as well.

‘Okay, maybe a park was a bad example. Maybe your house. Your bedroom. Somewhere else, where you would usually have some privacy’ Cillian chuckled and you momentarily closed your eyes and tried.

‘Okay. Let’s do this’ you then said again and Cillian nodded before giving Tim the go ahead.

‘Okay then’ he confirmed and, after about three goes, you managed to say your lines and found yourself in Cillian’s embrace.

Just as the script demanded, Cillian then slid the cardigan off your shoulders and it landed on the floor while you tried to push him on to the bed. He let you, but each time you tried to be dominant, it looked awkward and, eventually, Tim called cut again, for the tenth’s time.

‘Okay, this is not going to work. Let’s move on and revisit this part later. Maybe we can even cut that part out. Let’s see what we get’ he then said before directing you to both get on to the bed which is where he would pick up on the scene.

You felt a little deflated but, just as you were supposed to do, you climbed on top of Cillian’s half naked body and he sat up and caressed your back.

You tried your best not to make contact with his intimate region as you rocked back and forth, allowing your clothed breasts to move against his body while caressing his face until, finally, he kissed you and you began to crumble again.

The nervousness inside your bones was evident to the director and so was the fact that, contrary to the script, you did not take the lead. You were unable to take the lead and Cillian realised that you were getting rather uncomfortable.

‘I am so sorry’ you said to Cillian who was nothing but professional and polite despite the fact that, no doubt, he didn’t really want to kiss you over and over again. By this point, you were up to take eight. Eight kisses and you simply couldn’t get it right.

You looked shy, afraid and nervous and Cillian was quick to hand you his jacket again as the scene was called off once more.

‘Don’t be sorry, alright!’ Cillian said. ‘It is your first day and a scene like this, on your first, is pretty harsh’ Cillian said before telling you about his embarrassing scene in a movie called 28 Days Later.

‘That is very reassuring, but I feel like a failure right now’ you said and there was something endearing about how he was so polite, yet his voice shook your core.

‘You are not. I have seen your stage work, Y/N. It was the best I have seen a very long time and this is exactly why I wanted you for this role” Cillian said and, after yet another break, the director picked up on the scene again and, this time around, gave you slightly different instructions.

As before, you tried to follow them and, this time around, you finally managed to get some of the scene right, including a close-up kiss with Cillian.

But then, the next part of this scene involved much more and when the director and the camera man gave Cillian instructions again on how to move and how to remove your bra so that your bare breasts were not visible on screen, your nervousness returned.

This man was about to take off part of your underwear. Your bare breasts were going to be visible to him and, the worst of it all, was that there was actual skin to skin contact between you. Bare chested and semi-naked, you had to pretend to have sex. You had to moan and pull his hair while he had to pretend to bite your neck. It was a raunchy scene and, after it took you one hour already to get a twenty second kiss and some mild physical interaction on camera, you didn’t know how long it would take you to get a scene like this wrapped up.

You did one take, then another, then a third and, eventually, during your fourth take your bra finally came off and the embarrassment and shame was written all over your face.

You tried again, and again and again but between that, the moaning and hairpulling, it soon became too much for you and Cillian put a stop to it. The scene was not going to get done today and you knew that this was your fault.

You felt deflated and thought that, perhaps, you were not meant to be an actress after all. Perhaps they should have casted someone older or someone with more experience.

You did not even know why you reacted like this in the first place. Why was this so god damn difficult? Was it because of your lack of experience or was it because you felt somewhat flustered in Cillian’s presence? The fact that you thought that he was incredibly attractive did not help you. It made it so much worse and you felt like a little school girl who was too afraid to steal a candy bar from the school cafeteria for the fear of getting caught by the principal.

Of course, no one should ever do that and you thought that this was the most ridiculous analogy you could ever think of but, in the end, you could not come up with anything else.

When you filmed this scene (or at least tried to film this scene) your body was waking up to the idea of having another man pressed against your body for which you did not have much experience at your age. But Cillian did, and tried to guide you, with his arms pulling you and manoeuvring you like a delicate doll. And yet, his efforts were futile as your actions did not translate to the dominance your character was meant to portray.

It was a disaster and the director was not exactly impressed by how the filming day ended and neither were you.

***

Later that day, back at the small unit which you shared with Emma, you sat down and rehearsed your scenes for Day Two. You had two scenes with Cillian and, luckily for you, neither of them were intimate ones. Despite this, you knew that you had to pick up your game but Emma believed that you were doing much better than you had thought.

‘Listen, your scenes are great. Sex scenes are awkward and after having worked with Cillian in the past I can tell you that he will not be annoyed or frustrated with you. He is one of the producers of this movie and probably called off the scene to do you a favour. He is a nice and caring guy and is very professional even though, sometimes, he acts like a twelve year old child’ Emma laughed after you told her in great detail about what happened that day and what you thought that Cillian might think about you now, causing you to panic about tomorrow’s schedule scenes with him.

‘He seems nice. But still. I failed. Miserably’ you said but Emma shook her head and pulled you off your seat.

‘What are you doing?’ you wanted know and all she had told you was that you had to come with her.

“We are going for a quick drive” she announced and you didn’t dare to question her.

***

Fifteen minutes later, you eventually arrived at a small cottage outside Wexford and got out of Emma’s car.

As you stood there, wondering what was going on, Emma began to knock on the door and, after about a minute, you were surprised when Cillian opened it, seeing that this was his rather secluded accommodation for the duration of the show.

‘Hey’ Cillian said before smiling and furrowing his eyebrows all at the same time.

‘Do you want to come in?’ he then asked politely as Emma already marched through the door and you were still standing there, frozen to the spot.

‘Uhm, yeah. Sure. Thanks’ you stammered as, in his pyjamas, he was a little less intimidating than being half naked.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Cillian then joked, seeing that, clearly, Emma was not there, at the cottage, just for fun and, when she asked him for a quick chat about today, you began to get a little nervous again.

‘A chat? Sure’ he said. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’ he then asked with a smile. His demur was generally friendly and down to earth.

‘What do you have?’ Emma asked cheekily while looking through his fridge.

‘Guinness or tap water. I am out of wine’ he laughed, causing Emma to roll her eyes.

‘Tap water’ she chuckled and Cillian’s look turned to you.

‘I don’t drink alcohol, so water please’ you told him and he went to pour you and Emma a glass of water with some ice.

‘You don’t drink? At all?’ Cillian then asked surprised and you nodded while he handed you the glass.

‘So?’ Cillian then asked, waiting for Emma to fill him in and, when she asked Cillian to tell you the story about their first ever intimate scene together on stage, he began to laugh.

‘Fuck, really?’ Cillian chuckled before realising why Emma wanted him to spill the beans on his little mishap. What happened today was clearly embarrassing for you and Emma wanted you to realise that it was not as uncommon as you thought.

With that in mind, Cillian did, indeed, tell you what happened and, according to him, the stage production had to be called off for three days because he inadvertently broke Emma’s nose.

‘How?’ you wanted to know, causing Cillian to shake his head. He could laugh about it now and so could Emma but, back then, more than ten years ago, he was petrified.

‘We rehearsed a scene on stage and it took about ten takes. It was not as intense as the scene we filmed today but it was a difficult one for us both. Then, when Enda finally called cut, I got up, leaning against one of the props and it slipped. My forehead went straight down and I hit Emma’s nose, breaking it’ Cillian explained reluctantly and you gasped.

‘Yeah, I was naked and covered in blood while Cillian almost fainted’ Emma laughed, causing Cillian to roll his eyes.

‘I did not almost faint’ he ought to clarify but Emma continued to tease him.

‘You so did. You turned pale and got all dizzy’ she said, causing even you to laugh.

‘Right, so today wasn’t so bad after all then?’ you acknowledged and both Emma and Cillian shook their heads.

‘Honestly? This scene should never have been scheduled for today. It was your first day on set and I spoke to Tim about it. We will just give it another crack in a few weeks or scrap it’ Cillian said and you appreciated his words.

‘I don’t want to scrap the scene. Clearly, you think that it is important’ you then said but Cillian laughed.

‘It is not that important. The production company wanted some sex and nudity, that’s all it is’ Cillian acknowledged.

‘Aren’t they getting to see your naked butt in the first twenty minutes? Isn’t that enough’ Emma then teased, causing you both to laugh.

‘Apparently not’ Cillian told her and, just after you had a little laugh yourself, you asked them both how they ever manage to film scenes likes this, namely raunchy intimate scenes.

‘Cillian? You’ve done a few more than me. Tell her about them’ Emma went on to say but Cillian simply laughed again.

‘What works for me will not necessarily work for you. I honestly just try to switch off and focus on my lines and the directions given to me’ he explained while shrugging his shoulders.

‘Great. I did try that and, quite evidently, it did not work’ you told him.

‘It might after we have some more scenes together. Like I said, I think that it was a mistake having a scene like this scheduled for the first day on set even if it was scheduled that way simply due to the mechanical breakdown on set three. You’ll be fine and we can talk through the scene beforehand if you like’ Cillian suggested and you nodded nervously.

‘That’s true. You will get to know each other first before you have to make out again. That always helps’ Emma chuckled, causing Cillian to cock an eyebrow.

‘Your comment is not very helpful Emma. Making out? Really? This is art, work, or whatever you want to call it. But it is not making out’ Cillian laughed, trying to cheer you up and you sure had a quick chuckle yourself when he commented on Emma’s suggestion.

‘Well, I tell you what I do Y/N and no offense to you Cillian, but when I film a scene like this I think about the man in my life and just switch off. So, if you have a boyfriend, think about him. That might help with the comfort level’ Emma explained causing Cillian’s eyes to widen.

‘I do not. I am single. Happily so. I only just separated from my husband’ you said and Cillian couldn’t help but comment again.

‘Yeah, about that…” he said with some concern before carrying on. “How will you go working with him on set? He is our logistics manager and Tim is rather concerned about you having separated from each other” Cillian pointed out seeing that it was him who convinced Tim to cast you in the first place and in spite of the fact that you were married to someone else employed by the production company.

“Honestly? I hate his guts! But I am professional enough to put my personal life aside and concentrate on my work, so don’t worry. I will just be fine” you told him, hoping that James would be able to do the same.

To be continued…

Please comment and engage. I love getting comments and predictions pretty please!

Tag List

@fastfan

@elenavampire21

@dolllol2405

@allie131313

@cilliansangel

@coldbastille

@kpopgirlbtssvt

@cdej6

@kathrinemelissa

@landlockedmermaid77

@crazymar15

@damedomino

@lauren-raines-x

@miss-bunny19

@skinny-bitch-juice

@odorinana

@cloudofdisney

@weepingstudentfishhorse

@allexiiisss

@geminiwolves

@letsstarsfalling

@ysmmsy

@chlorrox

@tommyshelbypb

@chocolatehalo

@music-lover911

@desperate-and-broken

@mysticaldeanvoidhorse

@peaky-cillian

@lelestrangerandunusualdeetz

@december16-1991

@captivatedbycillianmurphy

@romanogersendgame

@randomfangirl2718

@missymurphy1985

@peakyscillian

@lilymurphy03

@deefigs

@theflamecrystal

@livinginfantaxy

@rosey1981

@hanster1998

@fairypitou

@zozeebo

@kasaikawa

@littleweirdoalien

@sad-huffle-nerd

@theflamecrystal

@0ghostwriter0

@stylescanbeatmyback

@1-800-peakyblinders

@datewithgianni

@momoneymolife

@mcntsee

@janelongxox

@basiclassy

@being-worthy

@chaotic-bean-of-smolness

@margoo0

@vhscillian

@crazymar15

@im-constantly-fangirling

@namelesslosers

@littlewhiterose

@ttzamara

@cilleveryone

@peaky-cillian

@severewobblerlightdragon

@dolllol2405

@pkab

@babaohhhriley

@littleweirdoalien

@alreadybroken-ts

@masteroperator

@stevie75

@shabzy96

@rainbow12346

@obsessedwithfandomsx

@geeksareunique

@laysalespoir

@paigem00

@lkarls

@vamp-army

@luckystarme

@myjumper

@gxorg

@eline-1806

@goldenharrysworld

@cristinagronk16

@stylesofloki

@faatxma

@slut-for-matt-murdock

@tpwkstiles

@myjumper

@cloudofdisney

@look-at-the-soul

@smellyzcat

@kittycatcait219

@theliterarybeldam

@being-worthy

@layazul

@lyn07

@kagilmore

@50svibes

@mainstreetlilly

@ourthatgirlabby

@bitchwhytho

@takethee

@registerednursejackie

@sofi128

@mrkdvidal1989

@minxsblog

@heidimoreton

@laylasbunbunny

@queenshelby

@camilleholland89

@forgottenpeakywriter

@vintagecherryt

@indierockgirrl

@mrkdvidal1989

@bluesongbird

@dudde-44

@gasolinesavages

@kissforvoid

@bluebird592

@1eugenia1isabella1

@esposadomdp

@lulunalua23

@lovelace42

@bookklover23

@iwantmyredvelvetcupcake

@moonmaiden1996

@marlenamallowan

@cyphah (cannot tag)

@majesticcmey

@cleverzonkwombatsludge

@throughgoeshamilton

@alessioayla

@elenavampire21

@justforfiction

@cilliansangel

@alannielaraye

@satellitelh

@pandoramyst

@duckybird101

@snixx2088

@kylianswag

@alessioayla

@pono-pura-vida

@iraisbored69

@howling-wolf97

@aesthetic0cherryblossom

@weirdo-rules

@lovemissyhoneybee

@dazaiscum

@esposadomd

@etherealkistar

@ur--mommy

@throughgoeshamilton

@celverzonkwombatsludge

@cyphah

@atomicsouldcollecto

#cillian murphy #cillian murphy fanfic #cillian murphy x reader #cillian murphy fanfiction #cillian murphy x y/n #cillian murphy imagine #cillian murphy x you #cillian murphy smut #small things like these

118 notes · View notes