The Tom Hollands have come together for a search engine-confusing conversation about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey – and broken the internet.
British actor Tom Holland, playing Telemachus in the film, joined his fellow countryman, the historian and The Rest Is History co-host Tom Holland, to discuss the extraordinary scale of the adaptation, acting in Imax, and balancing the movie’s historical reality with ancient myth.
The Rest Is History sit-down — which prompted a good few Spider-Man meme reactions, in reference to the actor’s upcoming MCU outing — also comes as the historian finds himself at the center of an unlikely culture-war clash with Elon Musk over Nolan’s film. Musk has launched something of a campaign against The Odyssey, riling up a herd of social media critics who call the movie’s diverse casting, such as Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, too “woke,” despite wide acknowledgement that Homer’s work is, of course, a piece of fiction.
The podcast host was invited to the star-spangled London premiere of the blockbuster, and would later take aim at the naysayers: “More praise for The Odyssey from people who — shockingly — have actually waited to see it before giving their opinion.” Musk responded, as he often does on the platform: “Tom Holland is such a cuck.” But the historian simply doubled down. “Very happy to say it again,” he wrote on X. “The Odyssey is an amazing film, and missing out on seeing it because you think it’s woke or whatever is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Your loss.”
Nolan himself has shrugged off the criticism, telling The Telegraph in a recent interview: “Comes with the territory… These conversations that happen before people see the film — they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”
One of the filmmaker’s lead actors told his namesake in the recorded conversation for The Rest Is History that he sees his and Anne Hathaway’s roles, as Telemachus and his mother, Penelope, as representing “the reality of the story.”
“Odysseus’ side of the story, Matt’s side of the story, represents the myth,” said Holland, who co-stars with his partner Zendaya. “And this humongous game of telephone has been played with this text. You know, it wasn’t written down for hundreds of years. There was a dark period in ancient Greece where no one would write anything down, so they would sing the song. So to me, what I love about the creative choices that Chris has made on that side of the story is that he’s kind of pushed the boundaries of what might be deemed historically accurate or reality, because that is the myth.”
The two also touched on the experience of filming in Imax, to which Holland (again, the actor) told the author, broadcaster and translator: “Imax is a very different beast. I would say that there’s a huge difference between acting on stage and acting on screen. And then there’s an even bigger difference between acting on screen and acting on Imax. Because you just can’t hide anything in Imax,” he explained, saying that the resolution is so good and “there’s no secrets.”
“There’s nowhere to hide. It really promotes a more subtle version of performance because it can very quickly become too much. So for me, I really enjoyed trying to find that biting point of where you were working perfectly with the camera.”
The Rest Is History, produced by Gary Lineker’s podcast behemoth Goalhanger, is one of the world’s biggest podcasts, attracting more than 25 million streams a month and recently crowned Show of the Year by Apple Podcasts.
