Jehnny Beth has reflected on working with Cillian Murphy after watching his performance in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
Beth previously worked with Murphy on her debut solo album, 2020’s ‘To Love Is To Live’. He was featured on her track/monologue ‘A Place Above’ and had a cameo in her song ‘I’m The Man’ in which he is heard in voiceover reciting the speech.
The singer took to her official Instagram to share a post about Oppenheimer. She reflected on what it was like working with Murphy and noted some similarities between the tone of both works of art.
“Seeing Oppenheimer last week I was compelled with the similarities between this text and his character in the movie. In this video I have edited them both together for fun and it’s quite incredible how they relate,” she said.
She continued: “I think Cillian has one of the best voices in modern cinema. I remember he wrote to me when I sent him the text: ‘It’s big stuff. It should be done in a slow way, a quiet way.’ He made it personal, as if hearing someone’s darkest and unfiltered thoughts.”
Beth explained that when she was writing ‘A Place Above’ for her album, she had the 1987 film Wings Of Desire in mind, sharing that her initial idea was for Murphy’s narration of it to be “cinematographic”.
“When we met, Cillian was everything you would expect, calm, friendly, very generous. We recorded three takes. For the last one, we played him the music through headphones. That’s the one we kept, one shot, no edits. Goosebumps,” she added.
Beth’s song ‘I’m The Man’ was previously featured on the Peaky Blinders soundtrack. Speaking to NME about how an artist comes to be selected for the show’s renowned soundtrack, Murphy said: “You just know when a song is ‘Peaky’. The artists are outsiders. They have resisted the tyranny of the mainstream, shall we say?”
Responding to Murphy’s assessment, Beth told NME: “I definitely feel like an outsider, for sure. It’s not just in music. I appreciate him saying that. Being an outsider is a compliment. I enjoy being able to see things from outside and bring in a perspective that isn’t necessarily expected. I’ll hold on to that position for as long as I can. I don’t have a choice really, I think that’s just who I am.”
She continued: “An outsider is the definition of the artist. You have to be an outsider to be able to say something about the world. It’s not worth hearing unless you surprise people. I don’t see any other reason to do it. Why would you want to tell people something that they already know?”
In other news, Beth will be serving as opening support for the Queens Of The Stone Age’s ‘The End Is Nero’ tour. She will open for the band alongside Viagra Boys on the mid-west and west coast dates.
In a five-star review of Oppenheimer , NME shared: Not just the definitive account of the man behind the atom bomb, Oppenheimer is a monumental achievement in grown-up filmmaking. For years, Nolan has been perfecting the art of the serious blockbuster – crafting smart, finely-tuned multiplex epics that demand attention; that can’t be watched anywhere other than in a cinema, uninterrupted, without distractions. But this, somehow, feels bigger.
