“I like the grit of going in as an actor and proving yourself to these people and earning the thing,” she said. “That exchange to me feels like a good starting-off point.”

A trained dancer who started in the theater, Debicki broke out in a big way playing the sporty Jordan Baker in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” and has been working non-stop ever since, transitioning seamlessly between massive productions like “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” to small indies and art house fare.

But she knew “Tenet” was going to be a different kind of challenge. When she read the script, she remembered thinking “I’m going to have to get really fit,” and she wasn’t just talking about physically. Debicki called it “Nolan stamina,” which she likened to a holistic resilience.

Over the course of the six-month, seven-country shoot, she would find herself racing on an F50 catamaran in the English Channel, in an epic car chase down a six-lane highway in Estonia as well as having to mine deeply distressing anger in her scenes with Kenneth Branagh, who plays her very, very evil husband, Sator.

She admitted that she was particularly intimidated by the F50 scenes.

“Those boats, I didn’t even know that they existed… I was really chicken about it in the beginning,” she said. “It’s kind of a gift of Nolan as well, who in every sense pushes you out of your comfort zone.”