Early in pre-production, Dr. Kip Thorne laid down two guidelines to strictly follow: nothing would violate established physical laws, and that all the wild speculations would spring from science, and not from the creative mind of a screenwriter. Writer, Producer, and Director Sir Christopher Nolan accepted these terms, as long as they did not get in the way of the making of the movie. That did not prevent clashes, though; at one point Thorne spent two weeks talking Nolan out of an idea about travelling faster than light.
For a cornfield scene, Sir Christopher Nolan sought to grow five hundred acres of corn, which he learned was feasible from his producing of Man of Steel (2013). The corn was then sold, and actually made a profit.
The method of space travel in this movie was based on physicist Dr. Kip Thorne's works, which were also the basis for the method of space travel in Carl Sagan's novel "Contact", and the resulting movie adaptation, Contact (1997). Matthew McConaughey starred in both movies.
According to Dr. Kip Thorne, the largest degree of creative license in this movie are the clouds of the ice planet, which are structures that probably go beyond the material strength which ice would be able to support.
The majority of shots of the robot TARS were not computer generated. Rather, TARS was a practical puppet controlled and voiced on-set by Bill Irwin, who was then digitally erased from the movie. Irwin also puppeteered the robot CASE, but in that instance, had his voice dubbed over by Josh Stewart.