Lupita Nyong’o is Helen of Troy in ‘The Odyssey’

Back in February, right-wing media bros were up in arms about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. The first images from the film had come out, but we only had a partial actor-character list at the time. As in, we knew that Matt Damon is playing Odysseus, Anne Hathaway is Penelope, Tom Holland is Odysseus’s son Telemachus, and some others. People knew that Lupita Nyong’o was playing someone important, but the right-wing bros were absolutely PANICKED that Lupita was cast as Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Well, Christopher Nolan covers the latest issue of Time Magazine, and he confirmed that Lupita is not only playing Helen, she’s playing Helen’s sister Clytemnestra.

Nolan was in talks to direct 2004’s Troy based on Homer’s other epic, The Iliad. That fell through. But for more than 20 years, Nolan carried this vision through Gotham, through outer space, through Los Alamos. In 2023, Oppenheimer, his three-hour biopic about a physicist in existential crisis over the atomic bomb, grossed nearly $1 billion and won seven Oscars. “That gave me options,” says Nolan. “And what had never really been done is a cinematic telling of The Odyssey with all of the capacity of a large-scale Hollywood studio production. It’s an odd gap in movie history.”

He has also studied the text and made several striking adaptation choices. Argos, Odysseus’ loyal dog, has been promoted from a cameo to a bit player. Odysseus and his son Telemachus (Tom Holland)—burdened by the legend of a father he doesn’t remember—are given more time together. Circe, an archetype in Homer’s version, gets a humanizing update thanks to Samantha Morton’s unsettling yet sympathetic performance. And the reunion between Odysseus’ fellow king Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) and his wife Helen (Lupita Nyong’o)—the most beautiful woman in the world, blamed for starting the war after a Trojan prince spirited her away—has always felt too neatly resolved in the poem. Nolan complicates it. And in a twist, Nyong’o also plays Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra, whose marriage to Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) is, to put it mildly, acrimonious.

[From Time]

I thought Charlize Theron was playing Circe? Now they’re saying that Charlize is Calypso. Zendaya is Athena. And I really thought that Lupita would be playing a goddess, which would be typecasting! But it’s even bolder typecasting to have Lupita as the most beautiful woman in the world. Stunning! It’s so funny that the right-wing (racist) bros were freaking out in advance and it turned out to be true, that Lupita is Helen. I hope she eats up the screen!!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images. Cover courtesy of Time.