Christopher Nolan wanted Zendaya in “The Odyssey,” and he used Tom Holland to make the ask happen. Holland revealed on “Access Hollywood” that during a meeting for the film, Nolan stopped to ask permission before floating the idea of casting Zendaya as the goddess Athena.
“He asked me a question, he said, ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question? And please don’t be offended by my asking,'” Holland recalled. He braced for something about his height. Instead, Nolan asked if he’d mind if Zendaya joined the cast. Holland agreed on the spot and offered to deliver the news himself.
That night, he nudged his partner toward the script without spoiling Nolan’s plan. “I just said to her, ‘You should read the script again,'” Holland said. Zendaya pushed back, insisting she already had. He told her to look closer at Athena’s part. “The little corners of her mouth went up,” he said. “It was amazing.”
Holland plays Telemachus, son of Odysseus, in the $250 million epic, an adaptation of Homer’s poem shot entirely on IMAX cameras. Landing the role required rearranging his schedule. Sony agreed to push “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” back so Holland could commit to Nolan’s production without a lengthy overlap. Holland credited Nolan’s reputation for finishing on time and said the delay gave director Destin Daniel Cretton six additional months to refine the Spider-Man script, calling the result the strongest entry in the franchise yet.
Early reaction to “The Odyssey” has been enthusiastic. Critics who attended premiere screenings this week described a film of enormous scale, with several singling out the battle sequences at Troy and calling Holland’s performance among the strongest of the ensemble, which also includes Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Robert Pattinson. One dissenting voice found the film uneven in places but praised its closing stretch. Full reviews remain under embargo until July 15, two days before the film opens nationwide.
For Holland, the stakes extend beyond his own performance. Getting Zendaya into Nolan’s cast meant sharing a project the two had never worked on together, a detail he treated as its own kind of achievement, separate from the film’s box office prospects.
