As we head closer to the middle of the summer season, we’re getting more excited for Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey joining other highly anticipated 2026 movie releases. While seeing what the director does with the classic epic unquestionably excited, so does the massive cast. And, apparently working with Zendaya particularly impressed Nolan – somewhat to Damon and Tom Holland’s chagrin.
Matt Damon gave Zendaya her flowers for playing the role of Athena in The Odyssey. As he shared, when it comes to working with Christopher Nolan, the director doesn’t give out compliments left and right to actors on set, but for Zendaya that was a different story. In his words, per Elle:
Zendaya, on the other hand—there were takes where she did one thing, she did this amazing scene, and he said, ‘Cut.’ And then he went, ‘Perfect.’ And literally, Tom [Holland] and I were obsessed with this. She got a ‘perfect’? I’ve never even gotten a ‘great.’ She got a ‘perfect’? He and I bitched about it for the entire rest of the film. ‘Did you get anything today?’ ‘No, I got a “good”—moving on.’ ‘Yeah, me too.’
According to Damon, who has worked with the filmmaker on two other movies previous to The Odyssey Nolan will often react to a take with “Yep, good. Okay” if he thinks an actor nailed it, but with Zendaya she got a rare “perfect.” The Odyssey also said this about the actress:
So it was this amazing ability she had to come in and really put herself in there and blow everybody away, and then just go back to shooting Euphoria. Look, you forget, she and Tom are very young actors and very accomplished for how young they are, but they’re still in their 20s.
Zendaya had the chance to play the Greek goddess while in the middle of shooting the third season of Euphoria and also prepping lines for Dune: Part Three. In the new profile, Nolan also gushed about Zendaya, saying she balanced her multiple roles with “this sense of true grace and poise”. He called the 29-year-old a “true movie star” and “an incredible actor” as well.
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Aside from The Odyssey starring Damon as Odysseus, Holland as his son Telemachus and Zendaya as Athena, the movie also stars Anne Hathaway as Odysseus’s wife Penelope and Robert Pattinson plays Antinous. Lupita Nyong’o plays the dual role of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Charlize Theron is Calypso, Jon Bernthal is Menelaus, Benny Safdie is Agamemnon, John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, among other big names.
Given Nolan’s last movie Oppenheimer won Best Picture and was a big box office hit, expectations are high for The Odyssey and Nolan said he’s been feeling a “massive amount of pressure” over adapting the beloved epic. It’s certainly no wonder why Nolan would choose Zendaya to star in the movie after her incredible track record as of late in movies like the Spider-Man, Dune films, or smaller hits like Challengers and The Drama. This year alone, the actress is in a total of four movies, along with starring in Euphoria.
You can see Zendaya slay in The Odyssey when the movie comes to theaters this July 17.