The Odyssey movie, directed by Christopher Nolan, is a blockbuster film released in the summer of 2026. (See Nolan’s Odyssey Movie).
The film is a cinematic version of an approximately 3,000 year old story made into an epic poem attributed to the blind Greek poet Homer around 700 B.C. It’s one of the foundational texts of European literature and civilization.
Nolan’s Odyssey was a great production and kept my attention for almost 3 hours. It has also been widely discussed and criticized for various reasons.
Even the controversy shows the power of the ancient story, which after 3000 years continues to captivate.
One of the controversial issues is the casting of a black actress, Mexican-born Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, a traditional white character.
Interestingly, back in 1950, famed director Orson Welles cast black American actress Eartha Kitt as Helen of Troy in his Paris and West German productions of Time Runs. (See here).
Does it matter? Directors can and do cast movies as they see fit.
But just imagine if they cast a white actress as a queen in a movie based on an African folktale? Do you think they’d even try that? Of course not. It would be called “whitewashing”.
Look at the outcry when white British actor Joseph Fiennes portrayed Michael Jackson in 2017, in an episode of the British TV series Urban Myths.
Fiennes was portraying Michael Jackson during the musical artist’s own “whitewashed” phase. Still, it sparked such outrage that the episode was never aired, only the trailer.
The Odyssey isn’t just any old story, it’s a foundational text of European civilization and literature. It’s been discussed for the past several milennia. Helen of Troy is definitely presented as a white blonde character.
It’s not that there were no black Africans in the ancient Mediterranean. There were some that traveled up from sub-Saharan Africa.
Even in the Trojan War story, of which the Odyssey poem is a part, Memnon, king of Ethiopia, brought an army to help the Trojans fight the Greeks. In the narrative, Memnon slew the Greek warrior Antilochus and Memnon was eventually slain by Achilles.
Here is an ancient Greek amphora (dated 460-440 BC) which portrays a black archer with two white amazons, showing a distinction between black Africans and white Europeans:
So yes, the ancient Greeks at some point knew about black Africans. However, the queen of Sparta, which is what Helen was, would not have been a black African. This was a very deliberate casting choice by Nolan. One theory is that he did it in order to be eligible for an Oscar, as today’s Academy Awards have “diversity” requirements.
Here is Lupita Nyong’o in her role as Helen of Troy in the Odyssey movie.
Lupita Nyong’o was also cast as Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, and half-sister of Helen. In the movie, however, Helen and Clytemnestra are presented as identical twins, since both characters are portrayed by the same actress.
The actress Lupita Nyong’o was actually born in Mexico, and has Mexican citizenship.
Lupita Nyong’o was born in 1983 in Mexico City. Her father, Anyang’ Nyong’o, was a politician from Kenya and at the time a visiting professor in Mexico. Her mother is Dorothy Ogada Buyu. Both her parents were of the Luo ethnicity, as was Barack Obama Sr., father of U.S. President Barack Obama Jr. (Small world, isn’t it?)
Lupita Amondi Nyong’o Buyu is the way to write the name of the actress in Spanish style, with the two surnames.
The future actress was named “Lupita” because they were living in Mexico, though they soon moved back to Kenya. However, when Lupita was 16, she was sent back to Mexico for 7 months (to Taxco, Guerrero), to learn Spanish.
Lupita Nyong’o identifies as Kenyan-Mexican. In 2024 she also became a U.S. citizen, just in time to vote for Kamala Harris.
So Lupita is a citizen of Kenya, Mexico and the United States.
Source: mapchart.net
In an interview with Elle magazine, the actress said that when she accepted the role of Helen of Troy “I really had no idea what The Odyssey was. I was like, ‘Oh, snap, I don’t know the first thing about this.’ So it was a crash course. I picked up the books and read them immediately. I have this film to thank for my Greek mythological education.”
In another interview, Jake Hamilton said to her “I want you to imagine, really quick, that you’re sitting in a movie theater, and you’re sitting next to Homer. Let’s say he speaks English. Let’s say he understands what movies are, and you watch ‘The Odyssey.’ When it’s over, you can lean over and go, ‘Okay, cool. What do you think about how I did this?’ What is an aspect of your performance that you’d love to get his thoughts on?”
Lupita Nyong’o didn’t answer that question bus instead complained to Homer: “I would be like, ‘So, Homer, how do you feel about the screen time given to these women considering how little you spent with them? Okay?’ ”
She is scolding Homer (c. 700 B.C.) as if the ancient poet were a 21st century screenwriter.
Homer’s Odyssey has a number of important female characters: Penelope, Athena, Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Arete and Eurycleia.
In 1897, Samuel Butler’s book The Authoress of the Odyssey actually proposed that the Odyssey was written by a woman.
So you see, the Odyssey has been discussed and disagreed about for millennia.
It’s one of the foundational works of European civilization, a story that can still hold our attention 3,000 years later.