The Oscar-nominated actress plays titular theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) on-off lover, psychiatrist and Communist Party member Jean Tatlock, with whom he has an affair.
In one of her scenes, the original version of the movies shows 27-year-old Pugh sitting across from Murphy, 47, in a hotel room, where both of them are implied to be fully nude.
Pugh is topless in the UK cut of the film as she talks with Oppenheimer, but in India and some Middle Eastern countries, the film has been edited to show the star wearing a computer-generated black dress for its cinema showings.
Fans on social media first began discussing the cover-up after a screenshot of the edited scene from the film started doing the rounds on Twitter.
‘The way I didn’t even know this was censored before looking at this tweet and thinking in the movie ‘this is the first time a MAN has been fully naked in a scene while a woman is covered’ HUH. Nvm,’ commented one person.
‘I was flabbergasted when I saw this yesterday,’ added another.
Several fans in India confirmed that they had seen this cut of Oppenheimer, while other viewers I countries including Dubai and Indonesia said they had also watched the same censored version of the scene.
‘Can confirm. This is the version being screened in Indonesia. A lot of her intimate scenes with Cillian was also heavily altered too,’ another fan claimed.
Sources close to the film confirmed to Variety that Pugh’s scenes were censored, as with any work including nudity or explicit sex, in order to secure a release in Middle Eastern countries and India, which otherwise do not allow that type of content to be shown in cinemas.
According to India’s Central Board of Film Certification, Oppenheimer has been given a U/A certification, which means it ‘can contain moderate adult themes, that is not strong in nature and can be watched by a child below 12 years of age under parental guidance’.
Oppenheimer has also faced backlash in India over its quoting of sacred Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita – including the line ‘Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds,’ which Oppenheimer is said to have recalled as the first nuclear bomb exploded – during another sex scene with Pugh and Murphy.
Uday Mahurkar, an information commissioner for the Indian Government, tweeted Nolan directly to air his concerns and anger over the film, which he said ‘makes a scathing attack on Hinduism’.
Pugh is shown as Tatlock making Murphy’s Oppenheimer read from the Bhagavad Gita as they have sex, which saw Mahurkar question the ‘motivation and logic’ behind the ‘unnecessary scene’, branding it a ‘direct assault’ on the religion.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has also condemned the film, calling it a ‘disturbing attack on Hinduism’ and accusing it of being ‘part of a larger conspiracy by anti-Hindu forces.’
Despite this, Oppenheimer has enjoyed a strong opening weekend as well as predominantly glowing reviews, with Metro.co.uk calling it ‘a taut and twisty intelligent blockbuster that asks its audience to think along with the film’.
Metro.co.uk has contacted Universal, India’s Central Board of Film Certification and reps for Christopher Nolan and Florence Pugh for comment.
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