Lupita Nyong'o Confirmed To Play The Odyssey's Helen Of Troy

Film ^ | May 12, 2026 | DEBOPRIYAA DUTTA

[Bon of Babble]

Lupita Nyong'o, has been confirmed to play Helen of Troy — as well as her twin sister, Clytemnestra.

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: dei; fail; furyspeople; hollywood; movies; queencharlotte

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

“Is this the face that sank a thousand ships..”
Achilles is even worse!

I will stick with my favorite movie HELEN OF TROY (1956)

[Reily]

The Egyptians still have a law suit going against NETFLIX over NETFLIX’s Cleopatra farce.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

From what I remember of the Odyssey, Helen barely appears in the story. IIRC, Odysseus stops at Sparta on his long way home to Ithaca, where he meets Menelaus and Helen - not very long in the book. This black actress obviously doesn't look Greek, but then again Matt Damon doesn't look particularly Greek either, and he's playing the main character. I'm willing to suspend disbelief if the movie is good.

Same goes for the transgender playing Achilles, who died before the story of the Odyssey even begins. He appears in the Odyssey as a ghost for a few brief lines. Hard to see this being that big a deal.

[mewzilla]

And sometimes a movie is agitprop...

[webheart]

I think Idris Elba is a great actor and I watch some of his shows with interest but he was not a good fit for Heimdall, a son of Odin and guardian of the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard, who was described as the whitest of the Norse gods.

[ek_hornbeck]

The casting would be fine if it was a radio drama. A movie is an immersive visual attempt to place you at that place and time even if it’s fiction.

That's one problem - if you're trying to recreate the ancient Greece of myth casting a Nigerian as a Greek just doesn't seem plausible. It would be like trying to make a movie set during the Vietnam War and filming it in Arizona with saguaro cactus and ocotillo in the background.

Problem number two, the bigger one, is that this type of casting is done for the sake of promoting DEI and the cult of "diversity".

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I want to see a remake of SHAKA-ZULU with some white tranny playing the part.

[Yardstick]

Suspension of disbelief was already out the window thanks to every female character having modern Hollywood lip injections. And now this?

[sphinx]

I would like to know who made this decision. Universal is NBC which is Comcast. I’ll have to chexk recent Universal movies, but offhand, I don’t particularly identify it with stuntcasting. But all it takes is the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[No name given]

Or even $50 million.

[No name given]

Exactly.

[stanne]

Matt Walsh is excellent here?

“I didn’t go to college so I don’t know Greek history but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have gongs’ passes as excellent here

Matt Walsh is not excellent here in my opinion.

[ro_dreaming]

This isn’t “Homers The Odyssey” - this is some WAFL ‘translation’ of Homers The Odyssey” that is being done.

Let them waste the $250,000,000 - on the film ALONE. Plus another $125,000,000 or so in marketing.

I won’t be seeing it.

[No name given]

Unfortunately.

[Kleon]

That's one problem - if you're trying to recreate the ancient Greece of myth casting a Nigerian as a Greek just doesn't seem plausible.

Her father was a god in the form of a swan and she was born from an egg. I don't think it's worth getting too specific when it comes to ethnicity. To me, the most important thing is that Helen stands out. Her appearance should be striking. I don't really care what shade her skin color is.

[proust]

Nolan fancies himself as an auteur who refuses to compromise on his “vision”. The buck stops with him, for better or worse. I don’t see why he’s considered a great independent director subverting the Hollywood system if he’s just going to make the same silly choices.

[stanne]

When people see it and come out after being immersed they will love it

That’s my prediction based on my knowledge of Chris Nolan fans, Chris Nolan’s expertise as a director and his wife’s expertise as a producer as well as Chris Nolan’s education in and understanding of literature and story telling

[No name given]

If this movie flops big time, I won’t be the least bit surprised.

[stanne]

“ Enjoy the movie”

I will see it after I get reviews. He pout a porn scene into the middle of Oppenheimer I did not want to see, can’t unsee. I’ll wait

[Zathras]

The face that wrecked a thousand ships