Lupita Nyong’o says the role she takes in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is “representative of the world,” a project she joined after walking into the director’s office with almost no idea what he was making. The film, Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s classic epic, is set to hit theaters on July 17.
Nyong’o said she went in “quite blind” when her agents told her Nolan wanted to see her for a role, and that he handed her the script during their meeting. She read it in one sitting. “I mean, I was saying yes even before he told me what role it was,” she said.
The casting list alone helps explain why she called it “dizzying.” Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Mia Goth are all aboard the production, turning Nolan’s latest into one of the most crowded ensemble films of the summer. Nyong’o said she had performed a few monologues from Greek mythology in drama school at Yale, but admitted, “I really had no idea what The Odyssey was,” before this project came along.
That matters because Nyong’o is not speaking as a newcomer trying to break in. She made her feature film debut in 2013 in 12 Years a Slave and won the Oscar for best supporting actress the same year, then went on to appear in blockbusters including Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Black Panther, Us and A Quiet Place: Day One. Nolan’s film has already drawn outsized attention, with advance tickets for opening weekend reported sold out in some theaters a full year before release.
There has also been criticism of Nyong’o’s role in The Odyssey, though the details of that criticism were not provided. For now, what stands out is how casually she stepped into a film that is already being treated like an event and how quickly she embraced it once Nolan put the script in her hands. “Oh, snap, I don’t know the first thing about this,” she said of her first reaction, before adding, “I have this film to thank for my Greek mythological education.”
The film reaches theaters on July 17, and the question now is not whether Nyong’o recognized its scale — she plainly did — but how Nolan will use a cast this large to turn Homer’s story into something that still feels immediate.
