Florence Pugh plays Jean Tatlock in Christopher Nolan’s historical epic, Oppenheimer, and despite her limited screen time, she makes a big impact, as did the real Jean Tatlock in Robert Oppenheimer’s life. Even over a year after its culture-shaking release, Oppenheimer is still breaking records. A mᴀssive summer event, Oppenheimer exceeded most Christopher Nolan fans’ expectations when it premiered to a mᴀssive box office, high critical ratings, and 13 nominations at the 96th Academy Awards, winning in seven categories, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Oppenheimer features an ensemble cast of almost all real people involved in the invention of the atomic bombs, as well as those not involved, but still critically important during a period of American scientific innovation, and some would argue, the beginnings of the most catastrophic arms race in human history. Florence Pugh appears in the Oppenheimer as Jean Tatlock. Though Jean does not have a lot of minutes on screen, her story is crucially linked with Oppenheimer‘s.

Jean Tatlock Was A Psychiatrist And A Member Of The Communist Party USA

Tatlock Was At Stanford While Oppenheimer Was At Berkeley

Jean Tatlock was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on February 21, 1914, to John Strong Perry Tatlock and Marjorie née Fenton (via AHF). Jean Strong was an English professor at Berkeley and instilled in Jean a great love of literature. She attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Mᴀssachusetts and later enrolled in Vᴀssar College (via TownAndCountryMag). One of her Vᴀssar classmates recalled that Tatlock was (via VanityFair),

“…the most promising girl I ever knew, the only one of all that I saw around me in college that even then seemed touched with greatness.”

Tatlock graduated from Vᴀssar in 1935 and then went to Berkeley to complete prerequisites for medical school. Then she attended Stanford Medical School, which she graduated from in 1941 as a psychiatrist. It was at Stanford that Tatlock began writing for the Western Worker, the Communist Party USA’s West Coast newspaper. Despite being a skeptic in general, as evidenced in Oppenheimer, Tatlock was a devoted member of the Communist Party USA, once telling a friend,

“I just wouldn’t want to go on living if I didn’t believe that in Russia everything is better.”

It was through Tatlock that Oppenheimer was introduced to members of the Party, introductions that ended up spelling trouble for both of them.

Robert Oppenheimer Met Jean Tatlock At A Fundraiser For Spanish Republicans

Oppenheimer Had Met Tatlock’s Father Previously

Just as it is depicted in the movie, Jean Tatlock and Oppenheimer did first begin seeing one another after a house party in 1936 which was also a fundraiser for Communist-backed Spanish Republicans (via Today). However, in a slight dramatic change Oppenheimer makes, Oppenheimer was acquainted with Jean’s father and so likely knew of her. Oppenheimer enjoyed meeting Tatlock’s friends and sympathized with the struggle, saying,

“I liked the new sense of companionship, and at the time felt that I was coming to be part of the life of my time and country.”

However, his work on the atomic bombs soon meant that he could not fraternize with the Party any longer. Her affiliations with Communists were brought up during the 1954 security hearing depicted in Oppenheimer and used as a way to accuse Oppenheimer of having far-left-leaning sympathies, which were used to discredit him.

Oppenheimer And Tatlock Engaged In An Affair

After Marrying Katherine “Kitty” Puening, Oppenheimer Continued Occasionally Seeing Tatlock

Both incredibly brilliant academics, Oppenheimer and Tatlock had much in common, including a love for literature. However, other parts of their relationship were not so storybook. Their romance was described as “intense”, which some friends speculated was because of Jean’s diagnosed manic depression. Like in the film, Oppenheimer proposed twice to Jean, who refused, and she did actually insist he stop bringing her flowers. Their relationship crumbling, Oppenheimer broke it off in 1939 when he met Katherine “Kitty” Puening at a party.

However, he continued to occasionally see her even after marrying Kitty in 1940 (via RadioTimes). The FBI began monitoring Tatlock due to her close relationship with Oppenheimer and, during his last visit to her apartment in 1943, they recorded everything. They read the transcript of the night to Oppenheimer during his hearing, with Kitty present. Though the FBI could not see what happened, the dialogue between the pair implied they had been together intimately during the visit.

Tatlock’s Death Profoundly Affected Oppenheimer

Jean Tatlock’s Body Was Found In Her Apartment By Her Father

Jean Tatlock suffered from clinical depression, which was exacerbated by Oppenheimer cutting off contact after their June 1943 meeting. On January 4, 1944, Jean Tatlock was found ᴅᴇᴀᴅ in her bathroom. She had knelt on a pile of pillows and submerged her head in her bathtub, drowning herself. Tatlock was found by her father and her death was ruled as a “suicide, motive unknown”. There was an unsigned suicide note in her room which read (via NuclearSecrecy),

“I am disgusted with everything… To those who loved me and helped me, all love and courage. I wanted to live and to give and I got paralyzed somehow. I tried like hell to understand and couldn’t… I think I would have been a liability all my life—at least I could take away the burden of a paralyzed soul from a fighting world.”

When he was told the news, Oppenheimer reportedly wept and went for a long, lonely walk in the mountains near Los Alamos. While the connection has never been confirmed, the Trinity Test may have been named for Tatlock. A fan of the poet John Donne, Tatlock reportedly introduced Oppenheimer to his work. Oppenheimer cited his sonnet “Batter my heart, three person’d God” as a possible inspiration for the test’s name (via LosAlamosNationalLaboratory).

The Conspiracy Theory Surrounding Jean Tatlock’s Death

Some Think Boris Pash Had A Hand In Tatlock’s Death

Thanks to her proximity to the Manhattan Project, Communist Party loyalties, and observation by the FBI, there has been plenty of theorizing about Jean Tatlock’s death. In the movie, these conspiratorial ideas are suggested by Oppenheimer having visions of Tatlock’s death. In his imagination, sometimes she places her own head in the water, and in others, a gloved hand violently submerges her. Tatlock was found with the drug chloral hydrate in her system and in American Prometheus, the book Oppenheimer is based on, one doctor says,

“If you were clever and wanted to kill someone, this is the way to do it.”

One potential suspect who could have killed Tatlock is Boris Pash, played menacingly by Casey Affleck in Oppenheimer. Pash was an army intelligence officer in the CIA who was in charge of counterintelligence in the Bay Area. He was a Russian immigrant who fought for the Whites in the Russian Civil War and was forced to flee when the Communists took over. He harbored a deep hatred for Communists forever after and was considered extremely right-wing, even by the standards of the time.

Pash tried to get Oppenheimer fired, fearing he was a spy, or at least was helping spies, of which he was sure Tatlock was one. However, these claims are circumstantial at best. It’s possible that there was someone involved in Tatlock’s death, but the likely reality is the simplest. Jean Tatlock had major depression most of her life, a real mental illness that many people struggle with, and took her life. She had a hard one. Tragic events unfold, and it’s sometimes comforting to think that there is a complex, intricate reason behind them, but just as often, there isn’t.

Christopher Nolan Apologized To Florence Pugh For The Size Of Her Role In Oppenheimer

Pugh Was Just Happy To Be Offered A Role In A Nolan Movie

Jean Tatlock only appears in Oppenheimer as a supporting character, and though most characters in the three-hour movie have limited screen time, Florence Pugh’s lack of minutes is notable considering how acclaimed and widely-known an actress she is. Perhaps that’s why Christopher Nolan apologized to her when he offered her the part (via VanityFair). Pugh talks about meeting Christopher Nolan in New York after he offered her the role,

“I remember he apologized by the size of the role. I was like, ‘Please don’t apologize.’ 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.'”

It says a lot about Christopher Nolan that he did not want to put any pressure on Pugh and respected her enough that he understood such a small part may be something she was no longer interested in at that point in her career. It says even more about Florence Pugh that she was able to see past the limited dialogue to understand just how important Jean Tatlock is to the story of Oppenheimer. If that meant the chance to work with Christopher Nolan, all the better.

How Accurate Was Oppenheimer’s Portrayal Of Jean Tatlock?

Tatlock’s Reduced Role Caused Controversy

Jean Tarlock’s inclusion in Oppenheimer is a complicated one that mixes elements of historical accuracy while also drastically reducing her real-life significance. The movie does a great job of highlighting the relationship Oppenheimer and Tatlock shared as well as the impact of her death, but reduces Tatlock herself to a tool for Oppenheimer’s character development rather than a well-rounded character in her own right.

Christopher Nolan has been criticized in the past for his poorly written female characters, with many examples of them being killed off to motivate the male characters, such as Mal in Inception and Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight trilogy. However, it is perhaps worse in this case as Jean Tatlock was a real person with significant accomplishments of her own, which are ignored. That said, it’s important to keep in mind that Nolan was telling the story of Oppenheimer, and even in a three-hour movie, elements of history had to be left out.

However, there are some who feel that making Tatlock’s role larger was essential to Oppenheimer’s story and that Nolan left out elements of her life that spoke directly to the themes of the movie. An extensive article in Inkstick enтιтled “The One-Dimensional Depiction of Jean Tatlock in ‘Oppenheimer‘” specifically looked at Tatlock’s biSєxuality and her influence on Oppenheimer’s social beliefs that they argue led to his post-war decisions, which found him betrayed by the government and former colleagues (via Inkstick):

Nolan’s complete and unnecessary erasure of Tatlock’s struggle with her Sєxuality, which is central to the film’s storyline due to her profound role and influence in the life and work of Oppenheimer, is a loss for audiences — queer and otherwise, who would benefit from experiencing the representation of a queer character of her influence and standing.