Because you apparently can’t make anything in our current hellscape without having to step over at least a thin layer of chud scat to do it, Lupita Nyong’o has now had to go on the record addressing all the people very angry that she’s been cast as Helen Of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, reminding them with more grace than we could muster that, buddy, The Odyssey ain’t real. Which, again, Nyong’o handled it far more politely than we would in a recent profile in Elle, addressing people angry that a Black woman has been cast as Helen with “This is a mythological story.”
“I’m very supportive of Chris’s intention with it and with the version of this story that he is telling,” Nyong’o said of Nolan’s film, which arrives in theaters this July. “Our cast is representative of the world.” (Nyong’o was, apparently, Nolan’s first and only choice for the part.) Elsewhere in the story, Nyong’o reflects on the basic absurdity, as an actor, of trying to approach Helen as “the most beautiful woman in the world” at all, instead of just another character to embody: “You can’t perform beauty. I want to know who a character is. What is beyond beauty? What is beyond looks? That’s the thing about doing such a well-known text, which has been studied and interpreted and derived from. The research could be endless. The good thing about working with a writer like Chris is that it’s on the page. The investigation starts with the pages you’re given. That’s what I based it on.”
Nyong’o’s casting in the film (which also includes her playing Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra) has been heavily criticized by the sorts of people—notably Elon Musk—who enjoy making a lot of complaints about “historical accuracy” and “Western culture” that all, wouldn’t you know it, seem to boil down to “I’m mad a Black person got cast in this.” About whom, Nyong’o additionally had this bit of extremely accurate equanimity to drop: “I’m not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.”
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