Christopher Nolan and THE ODYSSEY Cast Break Down Their Crazy Shot Sequences

I don't actually know how much we're supposed to talk about that stuff. But the way they shot that is so crazy. We were there and we still don't know how it happened. Yeah. No one could stand between me and home. We know that Christopher Nolan can sometimes go to a bit of an extreme to get the shot, whatever the shot might be. Is there anything that happened on the set of this film that might sound fake, but it's 100 percent true? Describing most of it. I mean, I remember the first time I climbed up the mountain to the palace in Ithaca. There was so much engineering that went on to build off of the side of that mountain so that we could stage everything up there so that we could we could break for lunch. There was a, you know, a platform built off the side of the mountain that held 200 of us. I sent a video back to my wife who was producing Ben Affleck's movie. So I sent a little video to both of them just to show them the amount of a build that it was just for that one location. It's it's unlike anything I've ever seen. There's no CG in a lot of the sequences, the action sequences. It's all legit and it's all forced perspective and clever camera angles. And I know the sequence between the Lystrigonians and Odysseus's men. Like, I don't actually know how much we're supposed to talk about that stuff. But the way they shot that is so crazy. That's all real. Like the way you're seeing that in the film is what that looked like on the day. And they built these special like platforms that would move around this forest in Scotland to create this like crazy depth perception thing. And just to think that far ahead and to have the confidence to be like, have this crazy idea is remarkable. And when I saw that scene in the movie, having been there that day when they shot it, my jaw like hit the floor. I was going to say the thing that I think people can't believe is we were there and we still don't know how it happened. Yeah. Like we were there, we were part of it. Sometimes we participated in the shots and then we saw it and we're like, how did he do that? You know, when I was throwing the puppies off the cliff. I heard because George, the spidernator, who we've worked with, he's like the best. He's a family friend of ours. He did all of the Spider-Man prequels. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So we got to grow up with him. But he was like, I was catching them in a like a soft pillow-ish thing. Yeah, because they're just I mean, they didn't drop very far, but he's just like making sure that they're landing safely. Yeah, because I was sight impaired. So I'm, you know, I'm giving him the puppy that he's going to become as Argus and I'm like dropping the ones that I don't want off the cliff. And I go, everybody, when they see the movie, they go, I'm going to be the most hated man in cinema history. But they weren't hurt at all. They were landing on the cliff. They were being caught by stuntmen. Yeah. There's a nighttime storm sequence in the film that we thought a lot about how to stage and how to get across the fear and terror of what it would be to be out at night. Scott Fisher, my special effects guy and his team came up with this extraordinary boat on a particular gimbal that it could it could thrash around in the most extraordinary ways. And Hojdevan Hojdeva, my director of photography. And I talked a lot about how to light it, what he came up with that I was a little afraid of at first, but I came to really love was the idea of lighting it really just with the lanterns on the deck. So you're not seeing the ocean other than in the flashes of lightning. And so he rigged this amazing sort of lighting source. And that was a whole crazy level of kind of artifice and mechanics of production that went into that to give the audience experience of, you know, being out there on that boat at night. There's a specific sequence with Circe. And it's not necessarily anything that he did with the camera specifically, but there are things that happen in that sequence with Circe that people would assume have been made with CGI. It's not CGI at all. Blew my mind. Same here. There's none. I can't believe it. That's wild. Does anything come to mind for you? I heard he wears suits every day and he really does. Yeah, he's dressed to see him in a in a in a full wetsuit when we were shooting in the water. Oh, wow. Yeah. Not many people have seen that. I mean, yeah, that's a rare sight. And I doubt they will. I don't know if he's going to be like, here's all the pictures of me in the wetsuit. Yeah. I want to start talking a little bit about the costuming in the film. Yes. Oh, nice. Are there any moments where there was something with your costume or maybe the props that you got to use that really informed a specific scene and the way you portrayed it? Ellen Mirajnik is one of the great costume designers who has ever lived. And we did numerous fittings and she was so painstaking. And we talked a lot about grounding him and layering him like so that these things look very lived in. And so it was a huge part of the character from the moment that they put that armor on me. It just absolutely situated us. And then the helmet, the helmet design. It was amazing. I just think the work she did in these far flung locations, you know, huge number of extras and then key cast members and featured like every single detail of the costumes I thought was was just just spectacular. I just used to love watching Ellen on set, you know, and you'd be like in the middle of like one of the most insane locations ever. And then you'd see little old Ellen just climbing over a hill. I love this a bit. My whole performance, I feel like was was defined by Ellen Mirajnik's costumes because we did the test and I wore this beautiful kind of dusty rose gown. And then I, you know, came back to L.A. and all of a sudden my gowns were these vivid jewel tone colors. And I went to Ellen like, why? She's like, well, Chris and I talked about it. We just thought that this should be the choice. And I spent the entirety of my filming time thinking, why? And then on the last day, I went, oh, my gosh. She wears bright colors because she's not in mourning because her husband is not dead. And then I thought about why we did the intricate hairdos, and I thought she was bright colors because she's not in mourning and she gets herself done every day because every day could be the day he comes home. No way. I like that. That's awesome. Ellen just did all that for me. I can't wait to watch it again with that in my mind. Yeah, me too. That's like such a nice layer. I wish I could say something as poetic as that. Ithaca's king is coming back. I was really excited to work with Ellen again. She did Greatest Showman many years ago, and it was such a pleasure to work with her then. She's so talented. So it was so sweet to reconnect with her now. You know, I remember my fitting with Chris and he just wanted it very simple. Yes, yes. And real, very real. He wants authentic. Yeah, it's very honest. And I was I was super happy. I was like, yeah, this is this is great for me. There's something very beautiful about the silhouette and elegant about it. This is my first time working with Ellen. Yeah. And they tried a lot of different costumes on me. And until we figured out this sort of, you know, peasant, I'm a peasant, hardworking man who was broke. And my costume is basically that. The sword that I had was a big thing for me, for Eurylochus. It was just slightly different to the other swords. It was sort of getting used to it and knowing the weight of it. So there was there's a moment in the Cyclops cave where I draw my sword and I had to sort of spin it in my wrist a certain way to get it in the right angle. And I was very nervous about doing it. But by that point, I seemed to have had enough of a and I suddenly felt at one with my sword, which was which was a weird feeling. Yeah. For Helen, I had this plate. It's like a sculptural plate, which I spoke with the costume designer and she, Ellen, and she talked about maybe it was like a piece of a broken statue that she she wore. And this artist called Misha Japanwala made it. And it just centered me in the restriction that the character was experiencing. And it's broken. It's imperfect. But it's also armor. And I really was inspired by it. The music is so incredible. It made me feel like I couldn't blink or I would miss something. And especially the cave scene with the Cyclops, it kind of reminded me of The Descent a little bit. I don't know if you're familiar with that. I read that Ludwig ended up recreating actual instruments used in ancient Greece. Can you talk a little bit about that decision? Yeah. I mean, I came to Ludwig early on and I said, I'm looking to do an earthy, accessible version of, you know, that's what I find in the poem. There's all this detail of, you know, how people lived and what they ate and, you know, this kind of thing. So I wanted to make it tactile and accessible. And so not having the actors do mid-Atlantic accents like in a Hollywood movie of the 50s or something. And so when I look at that, what does that say about the music? Because a lot of music in films is based on the kind of 19th century romantic orchestral tradition. And surely we shouldn't be doing that if we're not doing that in other ways. So he started looking at gongs and bronze and the lyre and the aulos, these ancient instruments, and having those reproduced and finding people who could play those. Yeah, he's really remarkable. But I'm pleased to hear you relate the cycle of Cave to the Descent because the music for that film was done by David Julian, a composer of several other films. Oh! He did an extraordinary job. Yeah, it reminded me of that immediately. Oh, that's great to hear. Yeah.