A weekend rumor that Elliot Page might play Achilles in Christopher Nolan’s film version of The Odyssey set off a fresh wave of backlash online, with critics reacting swiftly and condemnatorily. The same online chatter also linked Lupita Nyong’o to Helen of Troy, drawing another burst of alarm over non-white actors being cast as Greek characters.
The rumors were never confirmed, but they landed while the film is already under scrutiny. Last week’s trailer featured Tom Holland as Odysseus’s son Telemachus and the line, “My dad is coming home!” That brief glimpse gave the project a public face, and the casting rumors quickly turned it into a wider argument about who gets to inhabit one of literature’s most familiar stories.
The reaction also collided with a clue about how Nolan may be approaching the source text. He has signaled a preference for Emily Wilson’s 2018 translation, which was introduced by denouncing “the gendered metaphor of the ‘faithful’ translation”. That matters because the argument is not only about race but about who has authority over the language and the body of a classic that has been read and re-read for centuries.
There is another wrinkle. Achilles, as he appears in The Odyssey, is not the unbroken hero of the Iliad but a ghost among the dead, telling Odysseus, “I would rather be a serf and till a poor man’s field,” and “than rule among all the dead in their decay.” The rumor attached to Page, who is a trans actor, became a proxy fight over fidelity, identity and whether a story that has lived for generations can still be cast in a way that unsettles old assumptions.
That is why the question around Lupita Nyong’o is already bigger than a casting whisper. The rumour has not been confirmed, and neither has the Page casting, but the response shows how quickly The Odyssey has become a test case for whether a high-profile adaptation can move beyond the idea that Greek characters must look a certain way. If Nolan’s film follows the lines now being read against it, the argument over who belongs on that screen is only just beginning.
