Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is full of daring casting choices. Robert Pattinson takes on a new type of villain as Antinous, a suitor scheming to marry Odysseus’s wife. Tom Holland takes a break from his Spider-Man duties for his biggest non-Marvel movie yet. Uncut Gems director and the voice of Bowser Jr., Benny Safdie, plays the formidable Greek warrior king Agamemnon. But the Odyssey casting choice that’s drawn the most attention (and debate) is, without question, Lupita Nyong’o as both Helen of Troy and her twin sister Clytemnestra.
On the surface, this is a silly controversy barely worth wading into. In Greek mythology, Helen is known as the most beautiful woman in the world. And Nyong’o is — just do a Google image search if you need any confirmation of how she’s up to the task. However, Nolan still made a surprising choice when he cast the Black Panther star.
In an interview with Polygon, Nyong’o recalls the moment Nolan offered her the role.
“Well, he said — and this was extremely flattering — that he was desperate for me to play the role, and when he was writing, he had me in mind for it, which is unusual for him,” Nyong’o says.
That last bit is very out of character for Nolan, who famously writes each new movie script without any actors in mind. In a 2023 interview, the filmmaker explained his process.
“When I am writing scripts, I try to be very disciplined and not think about actors,” he said. “If you are writing to an actor, you are imagining things they have already done. It is very important to write the character in a pure way.”
Even for Oppenheimer, which starred Nolan’s longtime friend and collaborator Cillian Murphy, it wasn’t until after he’d finished the script that the director looked at a picture of the scientist and realized he was a dead ringer for Murphy.
So why break his own rule for The Odyssey? Nolan told Nyong’o back when he first offered the role suggests it may have more to do with her tremendous acting talent than her undeniable beauty.
“He explained to me that the large idea that he was looking into in this film is the cost of war,” Nyong’o recalls. “So the fact that all we know about Helen is that she was the most beautiful tells us that there’s so much we have failed to consider — or to ask about — behind that face. As a woman, behind that face is a lived experience. How does she feel about everything that’s going on in her name? So it was about really taking the spotlight away from her face and getting a chance to glimpse beyond that to who she might be.”
The Odyssey releases in theaters on July 17.
