Florence Pugh has said director Christopher Nolan apologised to her over the size of her role in Oppenheimer.

The actor stars in the historical drama as Jean Tatlock, a communist party member who had a romantic relationship with physicist J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy).

“I didn’t really know what was going on or what it was that was being made. Except I knew that Chris really, really wanted me to know that it wasn’t a very big role and he understood if I didn’t want to come near it. And I was like, ‘Doesn’t matter. Even if I’m a coffee maker at a cafe in the back of the room, let’s do it,'" Florence said in the interview.

“I remember he apologised for the size of the role. I was like, ‘Please don’t apologise.' And then he said, ‘We’ll send you the script, and honestly, you just read it and decide if it’s like… I completely understand the sizing thing.' And I remember that evening when I got the script being like, ‘I don’t need to… I know I’m going to do it,'" Florence added.

Oppenheimer, set during World War II, follows physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, known as the Father of the Atomic Bomb. It is set during a period in history when he feared that testing the atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world, yet he pushed the button anyway. 

Apart from Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh, the biopic stars Robert Downey Jr, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, and Rami Malek, among others. The film received rave reviews for its writing and cinematography and earned more than 700 million at the box office.