Tom Holland Reveals He Was Nervous About One Key ‘The Odyssey’ Relationship Until He Learned Who Was Cast

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic asked its cast to carry some genuinely heavy emotional weight, and few relationships in the film matter more than the tense standoff between Telemachus and Antinous, the ruthless suitor threatening to take over Ithaca in Odysseus’s absence. For Tom Holland, who plays Telemachus, getting that dynamic right was not something he took lightly heading into production.

During a group conversation for Entertainment Weekly’s Around the Table series alongside director Christopher Nolan and cast members Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and John Leguizamo, Holland opened up about just how much pressure he initially felt around building that central conflict.

Speaking to the outlet, he explained that the friction between his character and Antinous was essential to his entire arc in the story, and that he was genuinely nervous about making that rivalry feel authentic and threatening enough to justify Telemachus’s desperate decision to leave home in search of his father.

That anxiety eased the moment Holland learned who had been cast as his onscreen antagonist. Turning directly toward his castmate during the discussion, Holland revealed that finding out Robert Pattinson would be playing Antinous immediately let him relax, joking that Pattinson is simply that good at playing what Holland bluntly called a dickhead.

“He’s my safety blanket … we’ve made 3 movies together … we establish the stakes of this movie right at the beginning, I felt the weight of that pressure … and the friction between these characters … I knew I could relax [when he was cast] because he’s so good at playing a dickhead

Pattinson, clearly caught off guard by the compliment, responded by asking when exactly this revelation had happened, prompting laughter from the rest of the group.

That comfort level traces back to a friendship that predates ‘The Odyssey’ by nearly a decade. Holland and Pattinson first worked together on 2016’s ‘The Lost City of Z’, before reuniting years later on the psychological thriller ‘The Devil All the Time’. That shared history gave Holland a level of trust in his co-star that made leaning on him during such a massive production feel completely natural.

Holland has been similarly complimentary about Pattinson’s performance in separate interviews, describing him as a real safety blanket on set and specifically praising his willingness to take big creative swings that somehow always end up feeling like exactly the right choice for the character.

Pattinson, for his part, has clearly relished leaning into Antinous’s villainy, telling Empire that he approached the character as essentially the worst possible stepfather imaginable, someone whose entire motivation boils down to forcing his way into a family that wants nothing to do with him.

Holland has also used the broader press tour to praise Nolan’s directing style more generally, telling GQ Sports that working alongside the director and producer Emma Thomas was an incredible experience, and that getting a front-row seat to how they collaborate on set was among the best experiences of his career.

With ‘The Odyssey’ now playing in theaters as part of a cast that also includes Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, and Jon Bernthal, the real-life camaraderie between Holland and Pattinson adds an extra layer of context to just how convincingly their characters’ antagonism plays out on screen.

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