The cosmic coincidence that landed Cillian Murphy a role: “Fuck, I’d forgotten that”
Cillian Murphy is easily one of the most exciting actors working today, with everything he does anticipated and scrutinised to the nth degree, especially since his globe-conquering turn as J Robert Oppenheimer.
His career is littered with standout performances and exceptional characters, and it can all be traced back to a pokey little horror movie set on the abandoned streets of London that saw him appear as bicycle courier Jim in Danny Boyle’s 2002 revolutionary zombie movie 28 Days Later.
Set just four weeks after an outbreak of ‘rage virus’ reduces the UK to ruin, the film is credited with revitalising the subgenre and introducing the concept of ‘fast zombies’ to a modern audience, alongside having a wide-reaching impact on pop culture, as Murphy would find out almost two decades later.
In 2020, the Oscar winner was speaking to Uproxx about an upcoming project directed by John Krasinski, and when the interviewer, who said they came up with this on the spot, but I’m not so convinced, remembered a scene from The Office in which Pam tells Jim (Krasinski) that she rented 28 Days Later instead of the Sandra Bullock film, 28 Days, Murphy relayed, “That is an amazing reference”.
He continued, a little taken aback by the callback, “It is a long time since I’ve watched that show, and I did watch it, but fuck, I’d forgotten that. I’m going to say that to him. He never said that to me that day. Wow, you have good recall.”
The movie the pair were working on was A Quiet Place Part II, with Kransinski having both directed the first movie and starred in it alongside his real-life wife, actor Emily Blunt, but was forced to step away from acting for the second movie on account of his character being very much dead, so Murphy joined the franchise in his place, with his return to a post-apocalyptic world infested with monsters drawing more than a few comparisons to his breakout role. At present, a third Quiet Place movie is in development with Kraninski once again behind the camera.
It turns out that this conversation might have inspired Murphy to give his one-time boss’ most famous character a second look, and when one year later, Uproxx sat down with the star again to find out what he and his young sons had been watching during lockdown, he revealed, “We did the whole… is it nine series of the American Office? That’s really quality television”. Moreover, he even got a chance to rewatch the 28 Days/28 Days Later scene, bringing this whole thing full circle.
Perhaps it was his experiences on A Quiet Place Part II and being in a real-life pandemic that reminded Murphy how much he loves living in a world where horror lurks around every corner, and while he was noticeably absent from the long-anticipated sequel, 28 Years Later, he is confirmed to appear in the upcoming follow-up, The Bone Temple, so who knows, maybe he’ll only make zombie-adjacent movies from this point on.
It’s never made explicitly clear that Krasinski cast Murphy because of the 28 Days Later connection, but it’s a nice little tidbit for fans of all three franchises to obsess over.
