Christopher Nolan Has a Message for Fans Criticizing ‘The Odyssey’s’ Lupita Nyong’o and Elliot Page Castings
Christopher Nolan is done staying quiet about the firestorm surrounding ‘The Odyssey.’ The director responded after weeks of online criticism over his casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page in a key role, with Nolan brushing off the noise as background static that means little before anyone has actually seen the finished film.
Speaking to The Telegraph ahead of the film’s release, Nolan said the discourse comes with the territory of making a big-budget adaptation. “Comes with the territory. These conversations that happen before people see the film, they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet,” he told The Telegraph.
Nolan reportedly does not own a smartphone and gets information about the online reaction secondhand rather than logging on himself, which has made his measured response all the more notable given how loud the criticism has been. Estimates suggest the film’s final trailer amassed roughly 542,000 dislikes compared to only 64,000 likes on YouTube, a ratio that put the backlash impossible to ignore even for a notoriously offline filmmaker.
Much of the anger has centered on Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy, with critics pointing to Homer’s description of the character having pale skin as evidence the role should have gone to a white actress. Elliot Page’s casting as Sinon, a Greek soldier who fights alongside Odysseus, has drawn similar criticism from the same corners of social media. The backlash escalated to the point where the official ‘Odyssey’ account on X restricted comments on its posts entirely.
Nyong’o has already addressed the controversy directly in her own interview. She told Elle that the story is a mythological one and that her casting reflects a cast representative of the world, adding that she does not plan to spend her time defending the decision since the criticism will exist whether she engages with it or not.
Nolan has also defended his broader creative choices in separate conversations, telling Channel 4 that he wanted to strip away cultural assumptions about the ancient world and make the story feel earthy and accessible for modern audiences rather than leaning into outdated ideas about how antiquity should be portrayed on screen. In a conversation with the LA Times, he was more candid still, admitting he may have been naive going in but that pursuing an earthy narrative felt like a no-brainer to him at the time.
What do you think about the backlash over Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ casting?
Despite the online outrage, early reactions from critics who have actually seen the film have been overwhelmingly positive, with some calling it among Nolan’s best work and others floating it as a potential Best Picture frontrunner. The director has only made one film since 2006 that failed to cross 500 million dollars at the box office, a track record that suggests the film’s box office fate may look very different from the sentiment currently dominating social media timelines.
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