60 Minutes - 02/18/2024: Crisis in the Red Sea, Fake Electors, Finding Cillian Murphy

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

As tensions continue to escalate in the Middle East and the Iran-allied Houthi militia launch strikes against commercial and U.S. Navy ships in the southern Red Sea, Norah O’Donnell was the first journalist to report from the region in the air, on the water, and inside the 5th Fleet’s Command Center at Naval Headquarters in Bahrain. O’Donnell speaks with the Deputy Commander of U.S. Forces in the Middle East, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper and other Navy officers about a new kind of warfare on the high seas involving anti-ship ballistic missiles, as well as the disruption of international shipping traffic and whether an endgame is in sight. In the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, Republicans in seven states where he won, including Wisconsin, banded together and cast fake electoral votes for Donald Trump. Correspondent Anderson Cooper reports on Wisconsin's fake presidential electors and interviews Andrew Hitt, an attorney and former GOP state chair, who claims he and his fellow fake electors were tricked into signing the documents. Special Counsel Jack Smith alleges the fake votes were part of a plan, orchestrated by Donald Trump and conspirators, to try to overturn the election. Ahead of the 96th Academy Awards, correspondent Scott Pelley joins enigmatic actor Cillian Murphy in Ireland for a candid interview since being nominated for Best Actor in the blockbuster film Oppenheimer. Pelley talks to the Oscar front-runner about how he transforms for roles, his secret to maintaining a low profile and more.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bonafide hit. Be cool, okay? We don't say it out loud. Hmm, okay. Can we just say it's great? Thank you for saying that, Elway. With lots and lots of laughs. So everybody knows. I only told Mandy.

I only told Mom and Dad. That's everybody. So, quick summary. Laugh at Georgie and Mandy's first marriage with all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning new CBS Fall. yes also yes global trade has been severely disrupted in the Red Sea by a dangerous militia in Yemen who the U.S. Navy is trying to stop. When was the last time that the U.S. Navy operated at this pace for a couple months?

I think you'd have to go back to World War II, where you have ships who are engaged in combat. When I say engaged in combat, where they're getting shot at, we're getting shot at, and we're shooting back. Beautiful kids, Andrew. Good, good. I'm going to blame you, Andrew, if they don't do it. Can you imagine the repercussions on

myself, my family, if it was me, Andrew Hitt, who prevented Donald Trump from winning Wisconsin. You're saying you were scared. It was not a safe time. If my lawyer is right, and the whole reason Trump loses Wisconsin is because of me, I would be scared to death. 5,000 miles from Hollywood, Oppenheimer star Killian Murphy prefers a beach to a red carpet. But his Oscar nomination brings a blinding light to an artist who'd rather disappear.

Emily Blunt told me, half-joking, your interview with Killian will be a disaster. Is this going to be a disaster? I don't, I hope not. We'll find a house. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bona fide hit. Be cool, okay? We don't say it out loud. Hmm, okay.

Can we just say it's great? Thank you for saying that, Elway. With lots and lots of laughs. So everybody knows. I only told Mandy. I only told Mom and Dad. That's everybody. So, quick summary.

Laugh at Georgie and Mandy's first marriage with all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning new CBS Fall. Yes, yes, also yes. After Hamas launched its deadly terrorist attack in Israel this past October, and Israel began its unrelenting war in Gaza in response, President Biden warned Iran and its proxies in the Middle East to stay out of it. One of those groups decided instead that it was all in.

That group is a Shia militia from Yemen, known as the Houthis. Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, but its 1,200 miles of coastline leads in and out of the Suez Canal, the primary route by sea between Europe and Asia, responsible for a trillion dollars a year in global trade. So when the Houthis began to attack commercial ships in solidarity with Hamas, President Biden faced a crisis in the Red Sea and sent the U.S. Navy into its first major fight of the 21st century. Our report begins not on the water, but in the air.

We're from a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane 500 feet above the Red Sea. We were the first journalists to see the types of commercial ships the Houthis have targeted and the U.S. warships sent to protect them. We are not going to let the Houthis hold this straight hostage. Vice Admiral Brad Cooper is the U.S. military's deputy commander in the Middle East. After October 7th, as the Navy's top officer in the region, he ordered the Fifth Fleet into an area it typically sailed right through. How many sailors are now in the Red Sea? Yeah, we've got about 7,000 right now.

So it's a large commitment. What makes the Red Sea one of the most important waterways in the world? 15% of global trade flows exactly through the Red Sea. And so keeping these waterways open is critical. It's a core commitment the United States has from a strategic perspective, maintaining the free flow of commerce. The Red Sea is about the size of California. In the north, the Suez Canal. In the south, the 20-mile-wide strait known in Arabic as the Bab el-Mandeb, or in English as the Gate of Grief. It was near there three months ago that a Japanese chartered ship built to carry cars was hijacked by the Houthis who posted this video. Since then, according to the Pentagon, the Houthis have attacked at least 45 ships and the U.S. Navy has shot down more than 95 drones

and missiles fired by the militia that controls one-third of Yemen, including the capital, Sana'a. As Houthi attacks intensified in December and January, the world's largest container ship companies all made the decision to avoid the Suez and go around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, adding as much as a month of travel time and a million dollars in fuel. U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told 60 Minutes two weeks ago the diversions pose a risk to the global economy, and in the near term... That's going to affect Europe much more than it's going to affect us. Tesla and Volvo were both forced to suspend some European production last month due to supply chain disruptions.

There are still ships going through the Suez, mostly smaller regional carriers, that are willing to run the current risks of the Red Sea. How much is that, in terms of that traffic, has it been reduced by half? It's been reduced on any given day, sometimes 40 percent, but it's clearly flowing. And I think in many respects it's flowing because of the defensive umbrella that we put over the southern Red Sea, for sure. The official name of that defensive umbrella is Operation Prosperity Guardian. It's a coalition of more than 20 nations that includes the United Kingdom. But most of the ships, aircraft, and firepower are coming from America.

When was the last time that the U.S. Navy operated in this pace for a couple months? I think you'd have to go back to World War II where you have ships who are engaged in combat. When I say engaged in combat, where they're getting shot at, we're getting shot at, and we're shooting back. Initially, the Houthis, backed by Iran, stated they would only shoot at ships linked to Israel

in support of the Palestinian people and to force a ceasefire in Gaza. Their ultimate political aims, as well as their actual aim, appears to be less precise. They have fired at ships tied to dozens of nations. The Houthis' official motto is, God is great, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam. While their slogan may not be new, their weapons and tactics are, according to Admiral Cooper. The Houthis are the first entity in the history of the world to use anti-ship ballistic missiles ever firing against shipping. No one has ever used... No one has ever used an anti-ship ballistic missile, certainly against commercial shipping, much less against U.S. Navy ships.

Admiral Cooper took us inside the Fifth Fleet's command center at naval headquarters in Bahrain. I think there's a sense that the Houthis are sort of like a ragtag kind of terrorist group. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That can be a sense and it would be a false sense and we would be unwise to consider that. You know, 10 years of being supplied by the Iranians, very sophisticated advanced weapons. They have hit a few ships. Of those targets, how many of them are directed at U.S. naval assets?

The overwhelming majority over these last couple of months have been directed at internationally flagged merchant ships. A small percentage of them are directly at U.S. Navy ships. What kind of damage would one of those anti-ship ballistic missiles do on a commercial ship? Well, let's go right here. This is exactly what it looks like. The Houthis attacked it, and you can see in practical terms what the damage was. The Houthis also have inexpensive Iranian-designed attack drones in their arsenal, like the 15-foot-wide Samad, with a range of up to 1,100 miles. Some of their anti-ship ballistic missiles resemble the Iranian weapons seen here and can hit targets up to about 300 miles away.

If there is an anti-ship ballistic missile launch, this ballistic missile travels at about Mach 5, about 3,000 miles an hour. How much time is there between a Houthi launch and then it could reach a U.S. ship? If it's coming toward them, now just put yourself in the seat of the destroyer captain on that ship. He has about 9 to 15 seconds to make a decision that they're going to shoot that down. It's intense. To speak to one of those destroyer captains deployed in the southern Red Sea, we took a five-mile helicopter ride from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower over to the USS Mason, where we met Commander Justin Smith. The destroyer is one of four American warships in the area that have shot down more than a dozen of the Houthis' anti-ship ballistic

missiles. How quickly can you see those? Anywhere from one to two minutes out. And providing me that decision space to give me the nine to 15 seconds as the captain of this ship on what my actions are going to be. You made it sound like that's a lot of time, 9 to 15 seconds. It doesn't sound like much. It seems very small and very short in duration, but my crew has that ready proficiency to be able to engage.

We learn that so far in this crisis, the Navy has fired about 100 of their standard surface-to-air missiles that can cost as much as $4 million each. Roger, over. The decision to fire one at an incoming Houthi missile or kamikaze attack drone is made in the ship's Combat Information Center, or CIC. 3-7-0-3. We can be attacked at any time and any place.

That's where Commander Smith showed us a video of the USS Mason doing just that. You see an intercept here followed by a quick explosion, showing a successful engagement. The weapon systems that you have on board here, and specifically the standard missiles, those are expensive weapons. And you're using them to shoot down $10,000 drones. Is that worth it? I don't think you can put a price tag on safety and the defense of our sailors on board. You have to be right 100% of the time.

They just have to get right once. A day before our visit to the USS Mason, about 100 miles away, another U.S. destroyer needed its weapon of last resort, a defensive cannon called a Sea Whiz, to shoot down a Houthi cruise missile that was a mile out and closing fast. Most U.S. warships have one of these gun systems, seen here in exercises. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has two. On that ship, with its 5,000 sailors and more than 75 aircraft, Strike Group Commander Rear Admiral Mark Miguez told us the Houthis have proven to be resourceful adversaries.

There are the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drones that the Houthis are launching. How have you seen them used? When we first got to this area, that we would detect the drone and then all of a sudden, you know, 10 minutes later or five minutes later, there was an attack. In other words, a ballistic missile being launched or a cruise missile being launched. And we've deduced over time that they are obviously using these drones to perfect their targeting solution. Since the war in Israel and Gaza began, other Iranian-backed militias have targeted U.S. forces in Jordan, Iraq, and Syria with at least 170 attacks that injured 183 service members and killed three.

Admiral Miguez told us so far the USS Eisenhower has only been focused on the Houthis in the southern Red Sea. Since January 11th, its planes have been regularly striking their launch sites in Yemen, as have U.S. destroyers. The U.S. also conducted a cyber attack on an Iranian spy ship that was gathering intelligence in and around the Red Sea. But the Houthi attacks keep coming. Could the Houthis do this without Iranian support? No. For a decade, the Iranians have been supplying the Houthis. They've been resupplying them. They're resupplying them as we sit here right now at sea. We know this is happening. They're

advising them and they're providing targeting information. This is crystal clear. Are there members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps that are actually on the ground in Yemen providing intelligence and targeting? The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is inside Yemen and they are serving side by side with the Houthis, advising them and providing targeted information. And so what have we done to degrade that capability?

Yeah, that will obviously end up being a policy decision. Our role at this point is to simply be ready and continue to be aggressive in exercising our right to self-defense. Do these offensive U.S. airstrikes against these Houthi targets in Yemen risk escalating this conflict? I don't think so. We're targeting those platforms that are targeting us. If we were to look at the calendar, right, since October 7th,

the surging of U.S. forces to the Red Sea. And yet they keep firing back. They keep seeming to be opportunistic in their response. Is the U.S. Navy, the Fifth Fleet, are the actions having an effect? It's very clear that we are degrading their capability. And every single day they attempt to attack us, we're eliminating and disrupting them in ways that are meaningful

and I do believe have an impact. How long does this go on? Well, I have a pretty clear endgame in mind, and that is the restoration of the free flow of commerce and safe navigation in the Southern Red Sea. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling.

History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. The month after the presidential election in 2020, Democratic and Republican electors representing the candidate who won the popular vote in their states, gathered across the country to formally cast electoral votes for

president. But in seven states that Joe Biden won, Republican electors got together anyway and cast phony votes for Donald Trump. They've become known as fake electors, and according to federal prosecutors, they were part of a plan to overturn the election, orchestrated by pro-Trump attorneys with Trump's support. State criminal charges have been filed against fake electors in Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada. Wisconsin's fake electors haven't been charged, and several weeks ago, one of them, Andrew Hitt, an attorney and former chairman of the state Republican Party, agreed to sit down with us to explain how he says he and Wisconsin's other GOP electors were tricked by the Trump campaign. You were head of the Republican Party in Wisconsin.

Were you a big Trump supporter? I worked tirelessly for him. I, you know, day and night. Let's put it together for the president of the United States one more time! Oftentimes, phone calls would start by 6 o'clock in the morning and wouldn't end until 10.30 at night. I did everything I possibly could. The Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt.

Andrew Hitt was often singled out by President Trump at rallies in Wisconsin. Andrew Hitt. Andrew Hitt. How are we doing, Andrew? We're going to win this thing. We've got to win it. But Trump didn't win in Wisconsin. He lost to Joe Biden by some 20,700 votes. The Trump campaign appealed, challenging more than 200,000 absentee ballots

on technical grounds in two Democratic counties. If you count the lawful votes, Trump won Wisconsin by a good margin. absentee ballots on technical grounds in two Democratic counties. If you count the lawful votes, Trump won Wisconsin by a good margin. That was false. What he said was false. The Trump campaign wanted the votes in Dane County and Milwaukee County tossed. Did you support that idea? It wasn't something that I was comfortable with. Dane County and Milwaukee County in Wisconsin are the most liberal counties. The majority of the black population in Wisconsin live in those two counties.

Correct. Correct. Personally, you did not believe all those absentee ballots should be thrown out. Well, I voted that way. You know, I voted that way. You didn't think your own vote should be thrown out? No. On November 30th, Wisconsin's Democratic governor, Tony E Evers certified Joe Biden's victory, authorizing the state's Democratic electors to gather at the state capitol on December 14th to cast their electoral votes for Biden. But days earlier, Andrew Hitt says he received a call from the Republican National

Committee. What was the reach out to you? Can we get a list of the Wisconsin Republican electors? That made you suspicious? It did. I was already concerned that they were going to try to say that the Democratic electors were not proper in Wisconsin because of fraud. You didn't believe there was any wise way to run? No, and I was very involved, obviously, in the election. Pitt was one of 10 Republicans nominated to be an elector if Trump won in Wisconsin. On December 4th, he says, he was advised by the state GOP's outside legal counsel to gather the other Republican electors on December 14th at the Capitol and, as a contingency, sign a document claiming Trump won the state in case a court overturned the election in Wisconsin.

In case the legal arguments that the Trump team is making actually win in court. Right. And I remember asking, how can this be that a court overturns the election, and just because we don't meet and fill out this paperwork on the 14th, that Trump would forfeit Wisconsin. And the legal analysis back was the statute's very clear. The electors have to meet at noon at the Capitol in Wisconsin on December 14th. That morning, the state Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling, rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to throw out more than 200,000 votes. But Andrew Hitt says he and the other Republican electors met anyway to cast fake votes because he'd been told the Trump campaign would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kenneth Chesbrough, a pro-Trump attorney who was

an alleged architect of the fake electors' plan, showed up to watch. We got specific advice from our lawyers that these documents were meaningless unless a court said they had meaning. You were deciding to sign this document as an elector and getting the other electors to sign this document based on a court challenge that you yourself don't believe has legitimacy. I wouldn't say it doesn't have legitimacy. That's different than not personally agreeing with it. You personally don't believe that legitimate votes by Wisconsin residents should be tossed out. And yet you are signing a document in support of a lawsuit which is alleging just that. And if I didn't do that and the court did throw out those votes,

it would have been solely my fault that Trump wouldn't have won Wisconsin. Beautiful kids, Andrew. Good, good. I'm going to blame you, Andrew, if they don't do it. Can you imagine the repercussions on myself, my family, if it was me, Andrew Hitt, who prevented Donald Trump from winning Wisconsin. You're saying you were scared?

Absolutely. Scared of Trump supporters in your state? It was not a safe time. If my lawyer is right, and the whole reason Trump loses Wisconsin is because of me, I would be scared to death. Signing legal documents of such consequence that you don't believe in and you don't believe the underlying reason for the documents, it's, I mean, it's not exactly a profile in courage. No. How do you feel about that now?

I mean, terrible. If I knew what I knew now, I wouldn't have done it. It was kept from us that there was this alternate scheme, alternate motive. That alleged alternate scheme is a prominent part of Special Counsel Jack Smith's indictment of the former president. Charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States. According to Smith, what began as a legal strategy in Wisconsin evolved into a corrupt plan involving six other states as well. Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida, number of votes, 11.

Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. He said we can't enter. Where some of the fake electors couldn't convince police to let them into the Capitol. We're electors. We're electors. The electors are already here. They've been checked in. Jack Smith cites this December 6 memo written by Ken Chesbrough, detailing ways the Trump campaign can prevent Biden from amassing 270 electoral votes on January 6th. Smith alleges the multi-state scheme was designed to create

a fake controversy and positioned the vice president to supplant legitimate electors with Trump's fake electors and certify him as president. By January 4th, according to internal emails, some in the Trump campaign were panicking. They believed the fake elector's documents from Michigan and Wisconsin hadn't arrived in Vice President Mike Pence's Senate office. Your colleague texted you, freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the Senate president. You wrote, this is just nuts.

What was nuts about it? I mean, we have the certification coming on the Senate president. You wrote, this is just nuts. What was nuts about it? I mean, we have the certification coming on the 6th. How do you not have the paperwork? I mean, you've said that you only went along with this plan to preserve Trump's candidacy in the event of a court ruling. January 4th, just two days before January 6th, did you really think that was still possible? Well, remember, the Wisconsin Supreme Court had been appealed.

And so January 4th, it seemed like, yeah, it's possible that a much more conservative United States Supreme Court could overturn a 4-3 decision. To get the paperwork to Washington, they picked Alicia Gunther, then a 23-year-old law school student working part-time for Wisconsin's Republican Party. I was on break from law school and wanted to make some extra money to pay for books and worked for the party for my month off of school. So on January 4th, I got a call from the executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, since I was helping out at the time. What did you think when you got the text? At first I didn't know what it was, and then he followed up and asked, you know, that the Trump campaign wanted these papers flown out to D.C. because they had gotten lost in the mail. Gunther says she picked up the papers here at the state party headquarters and on January 5th flew to Washington.

So this is the email. She showed us her email chain with Ken Chesbrough and the Trump campaign senior advisor, Mike Roman. Explaining that I should only give the documents to Ken Chesbrough. So, and then they asked me to meet up with him outside the Trump Hotel. I mean, it sounds very secretive. Yeah, I thought that that email was pretty odd and dramatic. And you knew what was happening on January 6th? In terms of the certification of the vote? I don't know if I was very tuned into that,

truly because I thought that a court of law would have needed to overturn the election for those documents to be used. Did you know what Chesbrough looked like? So he had actually sent me a selfie. He sent you a selfie? Yes. So that you would know it was him?

Yeah. Can I see it? Yeah. She still has the photo saved on her phone. That's Ken Chesbrough. Mm-hmm. What did he say to you? He kind of took a dramatic step back and looked at me and said, you might have just made history.

Ken Chesbrough told investigators he delivered the Wisconsin documents to Capitol Hill. The next day, on January 6th, he can be seen in videos outside the Capitol near conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. I now want to look even more deeply at the fake elector scheme. According to the January 6th Select Committee, an aide to Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson tried to arrange to get the fake elector's slates to Vice President Pence. And I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. But Pence's aide refused, texting,

do not give that to him, according to the committee. When the Senate chamber had to be evacuated, the real electoral votes in these boxes were taken to safety. And when Congress resumed, they were returned into the House chamber. Vice President Pence announced the election results and closed the session at 3.44 a.m. January 7th. The Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear the Trump campaign's lawsuit in Wisconsin. What do you think about Donald Trump continuing to claim that the 2020 election was stolen? I mean, it wasn't stolen. It wasn't stolen in Wisconsin. This past December, Andrew Hitt and Wisconsin's other Republican electors settled a

civil lawsuit against them by some of the state's Democratic electors. They admitted they signed a document that was used as part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Hitt resigned as chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party in August 2021. He's cooperated with the January 6th committee. Using our electors in ways that we weren't told about and we wouldn't have supported. And he says he's also cooperated with federal prosecutors. He maintains he and the other fake electors in Wisconsin were tricked. Whenever anybody sees our text messages, our emails, our documents, they understand, they know, their conclusion is we were tricked.

The January 6th committee saw it. Jack Smith specifically in his indictment refers to some of the electors were tricked. That was us. The former president is known to watch 60 Minutes. If he's watching, what would you want to say to him? I would say that this country needs to move forward, that we need a leader who is, tackles serious problems and serious issues that this country faces, and we need faith in our institutions again.

And the next president of the United States needs to do that. And in your opinion, that's not him? It is not him. Correct. 2023 was the year the world learned to pronounce Killian. The ancient Irish name seemed to be on everyone's lips as the film Oppenheimer became a blockbuster with 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Actor forillian Murphy. Murphy has worked non-stop for nearly 30 years, but it was the epic drama of the atomic bomb that ignited a star. In this moment, with a golden globe under his pork pie hat and the Oscars three weeks away, Murphy is more famous than well-known. So we set out to learn more. We were warned the 47-year-old Irishman is reserved and wouldn't talk about himself, but we discovered finding Killian Murphy depends on where you look. Ireland's Dingle Peninsula was named for a goddess before such things were written,

and for 6,000 years, stories have passed by ear. So if verse inhabits every Irish soul, then in a country pub, Killian Murphy is among peers, as he would have it, just a man with a pint to lift and no fame to bear. What is the meaning of Ireland to you? I don't think I can answer that question satisfactorily. It's defined who I am as a person and my values. It's just home. Home includes his wife of 20 years, two teenage sons, and Scout, a lab named for the character in To Kill a Mockingbird.

That figures. Murphy has always let stories lead his path. You find so much empathy in novels, you know, because there you are putting yourself into somebody else's point of view. I've always been a big reader. When a movie can connect with someone and they feel seen or feel heard or a novel can change somebody's life or a piece of music, an album can change someone's life and I've had all that happen to me and that's the power of good art I think. There's a straight line from the music in the pub to Oppenheimer. I think they're from the same source.

I mean, I really do. I don't see... I see it's all in a continuum. You know what I mean? It's just a form of expression. Expression in the eyes of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who created the atom bomb but never controlled it. If they detonated too high in the air,

the blast wouldn't be as powerful. With respect, Dr. Oppenheimer, we'll take it from here. I remember reading at the beginning about him that he was more riddle than answer. And I thought, oh, okay, wow. That's interesting. I'm curious about your notes. The riddle was in this script by writer-director Christopher Nolan, printed in red so it couldn't be photocopied. I did genuinely think it's one

of the greatest screenplays I'd ever read. And you told him I'll do it? I mean, I said I'd do it before I read it. That's quite a risk. Why would you do that? It's always paid off for me, you know, in every film that I've worked with him on.'m not going back i'll go back there have been six chris nolan films for murphy dunkirk inception and three batman titles would you like to see my mask you told me that getting a film made and getting it seen is a miracle. It is. And then if it's any way good, that's a miracle. And then if it connects with audiences, that's a miracle.

So it's a miracle upon miracle upon miracle to have a film like Oppenheimer. It really is. His Oppenheimer was not so much a miracle as hard work. He lost 28 pounds to get the silhouette. Then he rose to the character step by step over six months, reading, listening to Oppenheimer's lectures, and covering miles on the beach, performing for Scout. I remember at one point I said to Chris,

Chris, there appears to be, he appears to speak Dutch here, and I think he's giving a lecture in Dutch here. What are we going to do about that? And Chris said, you mean, what are you going to do about that? The Bulls sing to us in an alphabetical way in our home. Frankfurt and Fischelin energy and the Verbindungsopernahme in the relative translase. What's he saying?

Murphy says he put all he learned in the back of his mind and acted on instinct. I think instinct is your most powerful tool that you have as an actor. Nothing must be predetermined, so therefore you mustn't have a plan about how you're going to play stuff. And I love that. It's like being buffeted by the wind and being buffeted by emotion. You don't get to commit the sin

and then have us all feel sorry for you. Emily Blunt plays Oppenheimer's tormented wife. You pulled yourself together. He's very visceral to be in a scene with. It's like he transports you. He'll kidnap you in a scene. My favorite acting moment of his in Oppenheimer is the scene after the bomb has been dropped

and he's addressing all of the people at Los Alamos. The world will remember this day. He somehow welds together the concept of being proud of what they did and regretting it very deeply all at the same time. I know. It's too soon to...

It's too soon to determine what the results of the bombing are. But I'll bet the Japanese didn't like it. No one moment is about one thing. And if you're as agile as someone like Killian and as vulnerable and as clever, you can play it all. But I don't know if many people can do what he does.

Killian Murphy discovered agility in his hometown, Cork. His mother was a teacher, his father a school inspector. In high school, Murphy and his brother had a band. Performing led to acting class and his first play. This is more like the size of a storage room than a theater. Yeah, but that's all we were used to. His first theater, 1996, age 20, the play was Disco Pigs, which grew to bigger theaters and became a movie. Why did you think you could be an actor? I didn't. I was very comfortable on stage in front of an audience from when I was little.

I never had any nerves doing that. It felt natural, you know, and thrilling. In this theater, what did you learn about acting? There's a fire escape door right there, that's a kind of an alleyway there and so you get a lot of like drunk guys out of their mind bashing up against the fire escape door and it used to kind of energize us. So I remember learning about like taking whatever you have sort of responding to whatever the energy is in the room and using it. That's really good training. Yeah. Maintaining your character with the drunk guy yelling through the fire escape door.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think theater is such an absurd undertaking when you think of it, because at any point it could collapse and go wrong. It's dangerous. Yeah, and I love that aspect of it, yeah. That love led him to drop law school, and since then there have been a dozen plays and forty movies. I love it when it becomes an immersive experience.

I love getting lost in it. In the early days that was, with theater, it felt kind of extraordinary that with just the power of will and a couple of lights and a good script, we were creating this world. So that's kind of addictive when it works well. It worked well in 2013 in a breakout role as a leading man. In the series Peaky Blinders, Murphy plays Thomas Shelby, who survives World War I to lead a family of gangsters. You're mostly in the war, so you know the battle plans always change and get f***ed up. Well, here it is. They're all damaged, broken men, but something got knocked in him and he came back with this incredible drive and ambition and like I'm not afraid of death so now I can do whatever I want in Tommy Shelby you created a sympathetic relatable monster care Monster. Kill and kill.

Tell the whites my people listen. I like to be challenged, and when I read something I want to go, I don't really know how I can do that. In ten years of Peaky Blinders, Murphy came into his own. I heard very early on in my career a director, it was one of the Sidneys, it could have been Sidney Pollock, but one of them said, it takes 30 years to make an actor. It's not just technique and experience and all that,

it's maturing as a human being and trying to grapple with life and figure it out and all of that stuff. So by the time you've been doing it for 30 years, you've all of that banked, hopefully. And eventually then, I think you'll get to a point where you might be an okay actor. Maturing is the theme of Murphy's next film, based on the novel Small Things Like These. He plays Bill Furlong, tormented by injustice. His wife fears his empathy will upend their lives.

Don't you ever question it. If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore. That's Eileen Walsh. No actor has known Murphy longer. She was his first partner in Disco Pigs 28 years ago. Is his work ethic rooted in fear or joy? Oh, that's a good question. I think it can only be joy, but it sometimes takes a lot of pain to get to that joy. The deeper we go with acting, the cost is greater for us. And physically, I know Oppenheimer, you know, has cost him for the

weight loss he insisted. And, you know, it was his choice to do, and it was the right choice to create that amazing silhouette. But from the very beginning, our warm-ups for Disco Pigs involved us punching each other quite hard, and going for it and then bursting out into it. This huge ball of velocity coming into it was the beginning of an Oppenheimer, was the whole kind of atom of us. Now, after three decades of work,

Cillian Murphy is cast in the most familiar Irish legend of all. Maybe there is gold. A 24-carat gold-plated statue at the end of his spectrum of talent. You have screwed this up, though, you know. In what way? You used to be an actor. Yeah. And now you're a movie star.

Okay. Am I? I think you could be both. You know, I've never understood that term really, movie star. I've always just felt like I'm an actor. That's, I think, a term for other people rather than for me. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.

Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. On Friday, Russia announced the death of Alexei Navalny,

Vladimir Putin's most prominent political opponent. The report says he collapsed after taking a walk at his Arctic prison colony. We spoke with him a little over three years ago in Berlin, where he was recovering from poisoning from a chemical weapon ordered, he told us, by President Putin. I think for Putin, why he's using this chemical weapon to do both, kill me and, you know, terrify others. It's something really scary, and Putin is enjoying it. You have said you think that Mr. Putin's responsible.

I don't think I'm sure that he's responsible. Navalny returned to Russia to face trial, imprisonment, and near certain death. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bona fide hit. Be cool, okay? We don't say it out loud. Hmm, okay. Can we just say it's great? Thank you for saying that, Ellen.

With lots and lots of laughs. So everybody knows. I only told Mandy. I only told Mom and Dad. That's everybody. So, quick summary. Laugh at Georgie and Mandy's first marriage with all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus

and returning new CBS Fall. Yes, yes, also yes.