Interview: Costume Designer Ellen Mirojnick Discusses Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’

Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick has worked with many high-profile filmmakers during her incredible career, including Adrian Lyne, Oliver Stone, Paul Verhoeven, Ridley Scott, John Woo, and Steven Soderbergh, but had never collaborated with Christopher Nolan before working on Oppenheimer. 

Speaking to Awards Radar on Zoom, the costume designer admitted not knowing much about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) before joining the project but “immediately picked up American Prometheus before meeting [Christopher Nolan] just to get a flavor of the man and the story as much as I could. After I was offered the project and read the script, I never went back to the book. 

It was such a fantastic script that Chris wrote. What he wrote was so cinematic, and adapting a book that had taken 25 years to write. He wrote a magnificent screenplay in the first person. There hasn’t ever been a script written in the first person. It was extraordinary. It began as an extraordinary experience. And it didn’t stop from that day forward.”

In collaborating with Christopher Nolan for the first time, Mirojnick described how detailed and immersive the experience was in stepping into the world of Oppenheimer that Nolan had created through his screenplay: 

“As you walked into this environment, I was washed in an immersive experience of the world of Oppenheimer and that we were about to create, which was extremely inspired in a way that only an immersive experience can do for you. From that experience and understanding, and doing my own research simultaneously, I felt a really solid foundation of the who, what, where, and how of this man. What fascinated me about him, and with Chris making the film, was that it was definitely fission and fusion. And what better director and genius to take this on but Chris Nolan, because that’s what he does. And he does it brilliantly. He creates fission and fusion. He’s done it with all of his films, and now we’re working with the subject matter, which was thrilling.”

In looking at archival images of J. Robert Oppenheimer, what became apparent to Nolan and Mirojnick was that he “liked quite a refined presentation of himself. He was a living contradiction at that time. He was riddled with insecurities and obsessed with what he was experiencing.

However, he did come from a privileged background. His father brought beautiful European fabrics into the United States, so he knew the finer things and subsequently dressed accordingly. 

We were looking at black and white photos, but you could see clearly how he appeared in 1952 and 1932 was quite similar. It had the same aura. We also looked at images of David Bowie that Chris had sent early on, which were from the American Life tour. Funnily enough, their looks matched, and they had the same silhouette. We found one colorized photo of Oppenheimer in what seemed like a blue shirt, and we just said that’s what he’s going to wear, and we made that decision.”

In designing the “centerpiece” costume where Oppenheimer “suits up” at Los Alamos, Mirojnick explains that you really see “the mythic quality of his silhouette. There was a broadness in the shoulders and a voluminousness in the trousers, which became even more voluminous when his weight came into play. The two-piece suit draped in a way that embodied bold strength. He was the sheriff of Los Alamos. That two-piece idea draped in a way that allowed him to walk in a way where he is king of the castle he built. The color palette was similar to the landscape. He had an engraved silver buckle with the center point being a turquoise stone since living in New Mexico, which was his joy. He was one with the land, and he carried that through in just that simple accessory as was the hat as well.”

The challenges of designing Oppenheimer’s costumes were “laid down in the very beginning in our initial meetings with Chris. He’s a big believer in authenticity. He wants these people to be real, but he also asked for a little bit of an original take. However, he did not want a stylized version of what we were about to create. He wanted total naturalness. The more organic the naturalness, the better Chris would be able to cut between scenes of different time periods with fluidity.

I dissected and deconstructed each period to find the essence of each period and be able to use that essence to find a focus and simplicity in all of our characters so they could be placed in any story order without taking the audience out of the film. That took a bit of re-understanding and reordering the periods. The biggest note I received was that no one else was to wear a hat except Cillian, and in many period pieces, everybody wears hats. That led to understanding a greater depth of the first person point of view and how potentially other people wearing hats would be a distraction in a way and set a place where it might be too precious, and you would lose that point of view.”

Working with large-format cameras and IMAX wasn’t a big challenge for Mirojnick, as she says it is something the costume department did naturally. Ellen chose fabrics with great textures and fabrics with detail for the IMAX. For the black and white section, she selected fabrics according to the gray scale.

“The only thing that we did because the film was going to be shot in both black and white in color was finding the best colors for both sequences. There wasn’t anything tricky in finding what were the best colors, if you will, to use in black and white. I followed the grayscale and checked it with an iPhoto lens to see how it contrasts with its textures.”

Mirojnick also described the experience of working on a Christopher Nolan movie for the first time, stating that it is “the most joyous experience you can imagine because the collaboration is so tight, which I think you see in the end. But when we begin, Chris is with us every step of the way. When you do a first fit, everyone is at that first fitting. Chris, Emma [Thomas], and I, along with the makeup and hair and props teams, are there to discuss all the actors’ needs, including the silhouettes, hair styling, makeup, and props necessary for their characters.

We all start together in the beginning after you’ve done your initial work. We begin at that point, and we don’t let up until the film ends, but Chris is there with us all the time. The plan is laid out to virtually completion before we go to work, and everyone knows what page we’re on. I think that that translates to what you have seen in the experience of Oppenheimer because I think the magnificence of this epic journey that we see on film is really a seamless and focused one. I find it to be one of the most original masterpieces that have been made in so long. But it all comes back down to the amount the work and the collaboration that we do together. And that starts at the very beginning when the actor walks into the room for the first time.”

Oppenheimer is now available to rent or buy on video-on-demand and blu-ray/4K Ultra-HD, with a theatrical re-release planned for January 5. 

[The quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]