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Lupita Nyong’o will play two roles in Christopher Nolan‘s upcoming epic adventure The Odyssey.
Confirming online speculation, Nyong’o plays Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world who is married to Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) and gets blamed for starting a war after she’s spirited away by a prince. The Oscar winner also plays Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra, who is married to Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon (Benny Safdie).
The casting was confirmed in a new Time profile of Nolan, which also revealed why the Oppenheimer director declined to cast actors to play the gods of Mount Olympus in his adaptation of the mythic tale. Nolan says he considered the idea, then decided giving the gods a presence through nature and the characters’ beliefs was the wiser move.
“I became more interested in the idea that, to people in that period, evidence of gods was everywhere,” Nolan said. “The wonderful thing about cinema, and IMAX in particular, is that you can take an audience to a place of immersion, feeling close to events like storms, turbulent seas, high winds. You want the audience to be on the boat with them fearing the ocean, fearing the wrath of Poseidon, the way the characters do. That to me is so much more powerful than any individual image you can have [of a god].”
In the piece, star Anne Hathaway (who plays Penelope, the wife of Odysseus and Queen of Ithaca) revealed that the A-list cast stayed in modest accommodations to keep the film’s estimated $250 million budget on the screen. “You’ve got Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, a slew of other very fine actors, me, and we’re all staying in budget accommodation on a small island in Sicily because there’s no indulgent nonsense,” she said. “It’s just about the work, and we’re all so happy to be there.”
Nolan gave some insight into casting rapper Travis Scott as a bard in the film. “I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap,” Nolan explained.
The Odyssey stars Matt Damon as Odysseus and is the first film shot entirely in the IMAX format. The project has been the source of intense speculation among Nolan fans online. A recent trailer even fueled a debate about the cast using American accents.
The ensemble of characters includes Odysseus’ son Telemachus (Tom Holland), the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron), Penelope’s suitor Antinous (Robert Pattinson), Odysseus’s servant Eumaeus (John Leguizamo) and Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, the Greek king of Sparta and Agamemnon’s brother. The main cast also includes Zendaya as the goddess Athena, Himesh Patel as Eurylochus, Mia Goth as Melantho, Jimmy Gonzales as Cepheus and Will Yun Lee in an unspecified role.
The Odyssey hits theaters July 17.
