A woman named Barbara “Barbie” Oppenheimer is having a tough time being taken seriously.
- READ MORE: ‘Oppenheimer’ review: Christopher Nolan’s mind-blowing biopic hits like a bomb to the brain
Barbara Oppenheimer is a retired Boston University professor and grandmother of five who lives in Newton, Massachusetts, but the excitement around this year’s “Barbenheimer” craze made things somewhat complicated for her during the summer.
In an interview with Slate, Oppenheimer said that numerous people thought she was joking whenever she would say her name outloud.
Recalling a specifically confusing moment during a recent vacation, she said: “When I checked in at the hotel, I said, ‘Barbie Oppenheimer!’ The guy said, ‘Are you pulling my leg?’”
Oppenheimer said that she “had college friends around the world texting me that weekend when [the movies] came out, with the whole schmear, you know… ‘the bomb and the bombshell’.”
“It’s pretty funny!” she said about the confusion. “It was a brilliant thing that they launched them [the films] together. It really brought people back into movie theatres.”
The retired professor also revealed that her husband is actually a distant relative of J Robert Oppenheimer — his father is third cousins with the father of the atomic bomb, which is how she ended up with the famous physicist’s last name.
Oppenheimer added that she and her husband saw Christopher Nolan‘s film on “opening weekend” because they “really wanted to see how they treated his story.” Ultimately, the couple agreed that the director did “a good job” in honouring the physicist.
Praising how the film depicted the moral dilemma of creating an atomic bomb, Oppenheimer said: “Watching him deal with these questions, and the politicisation of it… I thought some of the most interesting scenes were about the patriotism at Los Alamos, as the staff felt at the time.”
She went on to explain how, even within her husband’s own family, Oppenheimer’s legacy is very much a divisive topic. “He was a hero to many, but he was also the subject of a lot of anger. I mean, I’ve always heard in my husband’s family, whether you claimed him as a relative or didn’t, really depended on how you felt about things,” she said.
Although the couple didn’t attend a Barbenheimer double bill, they eventually got around to seeing Barbie two weeks later, and Oppenheimer noted that her husband “laughed out loud” throughout the entire movie.
When asked which film she enjoyed more, the grandmother of five said that she couldn’t “choose” a favourite, but was “glad I saw both”.
She added that she enjoyed both films so much that she even purchased a Barbenheimer T-shirt. “I’m going next week with a group of women and we’ll all wear pink,” she said. “I’ll wear my Barbenheimer T-shirt.”
In its sixth week of release, Oppenheimer has now topped the global box office, surpassing Barbie for the first time.
Since both films were released on July 21, Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy has remained ahead of Oppenheimer at the global box office. On the weekend of August 25-27, however, Christopher Nolan’s historical drama topped the chart.
As reported by ScreenDaily, Oppenheimer took $38.1million globally within the weekend timeframe, while Barbie trailed behind with $35.3million.