Christopher Nolan Turned His Cast’s Real Seasickness Into Footage for ‘The Odyssey’

Christopher Nolan’s commitment to practical filmmaking has produced some legendary behind-the-scenes stories over the years, from flipping a real jumbo jet for Tenet to bending an actual hallway set for Inception. His approach to ‘The Odyssey‘ pushed that philosophy even further, sending his cast onto open water rather than relying on a soundstage to capture the story’s most treacherous sea voyages.

For the film’s maritime sequences, the production used the Draken Harald Hårfagre, the largest modern Viking longship in existence, sailing it between filming locations across the Aegadian and Aeolian Islands in Sicily and Italy between April and May of 2025. Nolan has described filming at sea as a particularly primal experience, a description that turned out to be more literal than anyone expected once the weather turned.

That primal experience reportedly went further than planned during one particular sequence. DiscussingFilm reported that one scene filmed on the 115-foot wooden longship hit conditions so stormy that many of the actors started vomiting, and that Nolan responded by asking the crew if they would mind getting the vomiting on camera.

Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus, confirmed the story in detail during a recent interview. Damon told E! News that a unique wave pattern caused by the swell and wind direction that day led to six guys puking and getting seriously seasick. Damon recalled that as the crew leaned over the side of the ship, Nolan approached with a camera and asked if it was okay to shoot, and the actors agreed to keep filming through it.

The ocean sequences were far from the only grueling part of production. Nolan told the same outlet that the cast faced roughly a 1,000-foot climb every day just to reach the film’s Ithaca set in Italy, a trek he described as brutal. A 15th-century castle on a seaside cliff stood in for Odysseus’ home, and with the country denying the production’s request to build an access road, the cast made the hour-long uphill trek on foot day after day.

Nolan admitted there were a few moments of turning around on set and wondering if the production had pushed everyone a little too far, though the director noted that once people looked around at the surrounding environment, they understood why the location was worth the difficulty. The film’s location shoot spanned an extraordinary range of countries between February and August 2025, including Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Iceland, Western Sahara, and Malta.

Carrying a budget of roughly 250 million dollars, ‘The Odyssey’ stands as one of the most expensive films of Nolan’s career and marks the first movie ever shot entirely on IMAX’s 70 millimeter film cameras. The film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus alongside Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, and Zendaya, and premiered in London on July 6 ahead of its wide theatrical release.

‘The Odyssey’ opens in theaters worldwide on July 17. Between the storm-ravaged longship footage and the brutal daily hikes to set, it sounds like Nolan’s dedication to authenticity may have given audiences a film every bit as physically grueling to make as the mythic journey it depicts.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!