{"id":668345,"date":"2026-05-14T06:25:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T06:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/668345\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T06:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T06:25:13","slug":"elon-musk-criticizes-lupita-nyongo-in-christopher-nolans-the-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/668345\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Criticizes Lupita Nyong’o in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tElon Musk<\/a> has again weighed in on Christopher Nolan<\/a>\u2018s upcoming big-budget adaptation of The Odyssey<\/a>, this time agreeing with a racist comment made by a far-right journalist who criticized the casting of Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong\u2019o as Helen of Troy.<\/p>\n

\n\tNolan\u2019s epic follow-up to his Oscar-winning juggernaut Oppenheimer is set for wide release in July. In the lead-up, the film has been heavily hyped while remaining shrouded in mystery. A cover story in Time magazine this week has revealed that Nyong\u2019o has indeed been cast<\/a> as Helen of Troy \u2014 who is described in Homer\u2019s classic as the most beautiful woman in the world and \u201cthe face that launched a thousand ships\u201d into war. The film also stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, and Zendaya as Athena.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Tuesday, conservative political commentator and Daily Wire host Matt Walsh took exception to the casting on X<\/a>. His post<\/a>, which featured a screenshot of The Hollywood Reporter\u2018s Tuesday reporting<\/a> on Nyong\u2019o\u2019s roles in The Odyssey, quickly caught the attention of the platform\u2019s owner.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong\u2019o is \u2018the most beautiful woman in the world.\u2019 But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave \u2018the most beautiful woman\u2019 role to a white woman,\u201d Walsh wrote. \u201cNolan is technically talented but a coward. Too afraid to do anything that even slightly challenges the spirit of the age.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMusk replied quickly, writing, \u201cTrue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWalsh returned to the topic on Wednesday, arguing that the role should have gone to a white actor, even floating Sydney Sweeney, who had became a lightning rod for arguments about race<\/a>, as an example.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re told that we shouldn\u2019t object to Helen of Troy being portrayed as a black woman. And yet if a major Hollywood studio made a film set in Africa and cast a white woman as \u2018the most beautiful woman in Africa,\u2019 those same people would literally riot in the street. If, say, Sydney Sweeney was cast in the role, they\u2019d be driven to murderous violence. We all know this is the case,\u201d Walsh wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tMusk also chimed in via the comment section of Walsh\u2019s Wednesday post, writing, \u201cAbsolutely true. Such hypocrisy in Hollywood.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThis was not the Tesla and SpaceX founder\u2019s first public reaction to the upcoming film. When rumors surfaced that trans actor Elliot Page might be cast as Achilles, Musk reacted even more forcefully.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of the dumbest and most twisted things I\u2019ve ever heard,\u201d Musk wrote <\/a>in response to a post by UnHerd. It\u2019s worth noting that Musk has a trans daughter from his first marriage: Vivian Jenna Wilson, who changed her name and cut ties with her father at 18 and has since publicly sparred with him online.<\/p>\n

\n\tMusk\u2019s commentary on the film dates to January, when rumors of Nyong\u2019o\u2019s casting first began circulating. He weighed in on what he characterized as a bold choice by Nolan \u2014 one of the rare auteur directors to consistently balance artistic ambition with global box office success, with films like Inception, The Dark Knight and Dunkirk.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cChris Nolan has lost his integrity,\u201d Musk declared at the time.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tNyong\u2019o, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, burst onto the scene in Steve McQueen\u2019s 2013 best picture\u2013winning drama 12 Years a Slave, for which she won the Academy Award for best supporting actress. Since then, she has built a distinctive career, including a dual role in Jordan Peele\u2019s Us, appearances as Nakia across the Black Panther and Avengers films, and a lead role in A Quiet Place: Day One as a terminally ill woman surviving an alien invasion.<\/p>\n

\n\tTHR reached out to representatives for Musk and Nyong\u2019o for comment on the posts on Wednesday evening. Nolan\u2019s rep referred the query to a rep for Universal Entertainment, who declined to comment on Musk\u2019s statements about the film; the rep was also unable to confirm Page\u2019s role. Nyong\u2019o\u2019s representatives did not reply to THR\u2018s queries.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for Walsh, the pundit who directed the documentaries What Is a Woman?\u00a0and\u00a0Am I Racist?, attempted to shut down responses calling his post racist with a post letting his detractors know that he has no concern for thier opinion.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s funny that these people think they still accomplish something with the \u2018erm actually this is racist\u2019 routine,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe don\u2019t give the slightest shit if you think something is racist. The word has no meaning coming from you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk has again weighed in on Christopher Nolan\u2018s upcoming big-budget adaptation of The Odyssey, this time agreeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,101938,250,75,246485,29185],"class_list":["post-668345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-elon-musk","tag-entertainment","tag-lupita-nyongo","tag-the-odyssey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}