One of the major actors in The Odyssey revealed a surprising detail about the film. She disclosed that she “co-directed” the movie with Christopher Nolan.
The Odyssey’s Lupita Nyong’o says Christopher Nolan asked her to co-direct her scenes
Lupita Nyong’o, who portrays both Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra, appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday night to promote The Odyssey. When Fallon asked about her experience of working with Nolan, Nyong’o noted, “It’s amazing. He will ask you to do things you have never done before.” She then explained how she ended up directing some scenes of The Odyssey.
The Oscar-winning actress began by confirming that she plays both Helen and Clytemnestra, and recalled a day on set when she was portraying the latter in a scene in which Agamemnon (Clytemnestra’s husband) comes home.
“It’s very short in the film; I’m not messing it up for anyone,” she clarified, before adding, “I had to put him through a bathing ritual. And Chris [Nolan] turns to me and says, ‘Lupita, will you give the background actors their tasks?’ And I just thought, ‘Wait, have I ever done this before?… Isn’t there someone who is supposed to do this?'”
The Black Panther star said that she figured out why Nolan was asking her to do this. She realized that her character is a queen, and she would be the one to tell the attendants what to do. “Thank God, I’ve done my homework. So I knew the kinds of things I wanted to be done around me.”
Nyong’o then gathered the actors playing Clytemnestra’s attendants and assigned them tasks. This led her to keep an eye on their performances while simultaneously handling her own duties as an actress, so she could give them notes to do their tasks better afterward. “And then I thought to myself, I just co-directed with Chris Nolan,” Nyong’o remembered. Fallon agreed and congratulated her as the audience clapped.
The Odyssey releases today in theaters.
