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Here’s Why Casting Zendaya And Lupita Nyong’o In ‘The Odyssey’ Is A Totally Legitimate Creative Choice Despite Backlash From Outspoken Minority

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A new feature piece in Time has revealed tons of juicy details about Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated The Odyssey, including the roles that Emmy winner Zendaya and Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o will be playing. Zendaya has been Athena, while Nyong’o will be playing Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra.

Despite the fact that both Zendaya and Lupita Nyong’o are two of the most acclaimed actresses in the world, people who are angry about seeing Black women in The Odyssey made sure to make their regressive feelings known on social media — some are saying their casting in the film makes it a “train wreck” or a “comedy,” while others flat out responded by saying “gross.”

“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.” [via Time]

Here is why casting Zendaya as Athena and Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy is a totally legitimate creative decision from Christopher Nolan

While many if not all of the people on social media complaining about Zendaya and Nyong’o’s roles aren’t able to articulate why they’re actually mad about the castings other than the fact that they’re Black women, we will gladly explain why their presence in the film is a totally legitimate creative choice from Christopher Nolan.

First and foremost, Homer’s iconic epic is not a documentary, it’s mythology. Circe, Calypso, and the Sirens are supernatural beings, and Athena is a goddess. The casting of mythological figures has never been bound by historical accuracy and has always been an interpretive endeavor, highlighted by the fact that stage productions and adaptations of Greek mythology have cast actors and actresses from various races for decades if not centuries.

And even if The Odyssey was meant to be taken as being “historically accurate,” the story is set in the ancient Mediterranea — Greece, Troy, and North Africa, plus various islands and mythological locales. The ancient Mediterranean world was genuinely multiethnic, so casting actors of African descent in a story set in that world is historically defensible in a way that casting a Black actor as a Viking would require more justification for.

The Odyssey, which also stars Matt Damon in the lead role of Odysseus, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Charlize Theron as Calypso, and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, will be released in theaters on July 17.

Additional cast members in Nolan’s epic include on Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, Mia Goth as Melantho, Elliot Page as the Ghost of Achilles, Bill Irwin, and many more. Check out an official trailer below.

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