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Moviegoers turned out in droves this weekend for writer-director Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer, fueling an expectations-shattering domestic box office debut of $80 million. The three-hour-long biopic recounts the life story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the theoretical physicist widely known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” and has been praised by critics for its nuanced examination of a complicated historical figure.
The movie is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of numerous accounts of Oppenheimer’s life and legacy. But according to Oppenheimer’s grandson, Charles Oppenheimer, the famous physicist’s family has their own their own approach to depictions of him and additional nuance to include.
Charles was born near Santa Fe, N.M., in April 1975, after both his grandfather and grandmother, Katherine “Kitty” Puening Oppenheimer (played by Emily Blunt), had passed away. However, he says he grew up having a very open dialogue about his grandfather’s work with his father, Peter Oppenheimer, who spent several years of his early childhood at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.
TIME spoke with Charles about what Oppenheimer gets right about his grandfather, what he would have changed, and the work he’s doing to further Oppenheimer’s legacy today.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
TIME: How was your grandparents’ story told to you when you were growing up?
Charles Oppenheimer: Like most kids, I heard about my grandparents through my parents, and there was a marker at one point that stands out in my memory of speaking about Robert Oppenheimer being a famous person who had done his duty during World War II. He…
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