Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway call Christopher Nolan “Captain Extraordinary” as they explain his directing intricacies

Variety has released its newest pack of actor interviews, where movie peers get to interview each other on their craft and their experiences on their latest films. The little interview series, titled Actors on Actors, pairs together notable names who you usually don’t see together for any project, but this year includes some seemingly deliberate combinations. Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy got to talk about their “Barbenheimer” experiences in one video. Then, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt got to have a Devil Wears Prada reunion in another, where they also shared their experiences of working with Christopher Nolan.

Once the subject is breached, Blunt immediately refers to him as “Captain Extraordinary.” Hathaway obliges, and the two joke about Nolan’s lack of effusiveness while directing, so they have to find other tells that he’s happy with a take. Blunt jokes, “I always feel that with Chris’ hair. I can tell when he is very happy with a take because his hair starts to dance. It’s almost like he vibrates when he’s happy. He’s not going to tell you that he’s that happy, though, because he’s very English.”

Hathaway then shared a story about a time he prepared her for a specific shot while working on The Dark Knight Rises, “The part that blows my mind about Chris is that he is authoritative in the best sense of the word. I remember one day we were doing a shot on The Dark Knight Rises. He came to me beforehand and said, ‘I just want you to know, this shot has lived in my head for many years. I’m going to be very specific about it. I’m going to make you do it a lot, but it’s not actually you. It’s just because I have it in my head a certain way.’ For him to say that in a way where, as an actor, you don’t start to question yourself!”

Blunt would also regale Hathaway with the fact that she didn’t get to see Oppenheimer with an audience due to the strikes, so she and her husband, John Krasinski, would sneak into a theater to see the reactions. “Because of the strike, we didn’t get to watch the movie with an audience. I realized that Oppenheimer was going to be a very significant moment in cinema history when John [Krasinski, her husband] and I managed to find two seats at an Imax in Nyack, N.Y., in a shopping mall. We snuck in when the lights went dark, and I saw a group of teenage boys coming in dressed as [Cillian Murphy]. In Nyack, N.Y.! I got chills. I called Cillian afterwards and said, ‘You’re not going to believe what I just saw.'”