Why David Krumholtz Got ‘Scared for His Job’ on the ‘Oppenheimer’ Set

variety.com:

Stuart Miller David Krumholtz tries not to make too many acting choices in advance. “You just need to find a chemistry with your scene partner and let the scene live in the moment,” says Krumholtz, who plays Izzy Rabi, the one physicist to challenge the title character’s goals and ideas in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” That chemistry came easily with Cillian Murphy, Krumholtz says, but still the shooting process in the early days were rough enough that he got “scared” for his job.

Krumholtz describes himself as a journeyman actor, and that trip took him to Broadway at age 14 (in “Conversations With My Father”) and then back again after a 30-year gap (in Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” for which he earned a Drama League Award nomination); at 15 he was in “Addams Family Values” but he became best-known for Bernard, the sardonic elf in “The Santa Clause.” He had small roles in movies ranging from “Ray” to “Superbad” and played a mathematical genius on TV in “Numb3rs” for five years and in recent years he’d graduated to prestige cable programming on “The Deuce,” “The Plot Against America” and “White House Plumbers.” Having only seen a couple of pages before auditioning for “Oppenheimer,” Krumholtz thought Rabi was a tiny part.

After he got over his surprise at landing the role, “my shock at how substantial the role was palpable,” he recalls. “The idea that this amazing filmmaker believed that I could do something special was validating, but then I had to live up to it so I was slightly intimidated … which only increased once I got to the set.” His first day of shooting was Rabi’s first meeting with Oppenheimer on a train ride.