{"id":492844,"date":"2026-06-10T17:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492844\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T17:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:50:08","slug":"himesh-patel-on-reteaming-with-christopher-nolan-for-the-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492844\/","title":{"rendered":"Himesh Patel on Reteaming With Christopher Nolan for \u2018The Odyssey\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tShortly before the holidays in 2024, Emma Thomas \u2014 producer, Christopher Nolan<\/a>\u2018s wife and the keeper of his secrets \u2014 met Himesh Patel<\/a> in London and handed him a physical copy of a screenplay. No emailing, no secure digital upload. Just a script, passed across a table. \u201cThat\u2019s how he does things,\u201d says Patel. \u201cIt\u2019s a very covert operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat script, it turned out, was for The Odyssey<\/a>, Nolan\u2019s much-anticipated, gloriously overstuffed $250 million adaptation of the greatest adventure story ever told \u2014 gods, monsters, wine-dark seas and all \u2014 with a cast that includes Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson and Matt Damon and a shooting itinerary that stretched across six countries on three continents.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, this wasn\u2019t Patel\u2019s first time working with Nolan, though the circumstances with Tenet, in which the 35-year-old actor had a small role as an arms dealer, couldn\u2019t have been more different. For that 2020 time-travel thriller, he received audition sides from Ocean\u2019s Eleven and didn\u2019t see a page of the real screenplay until he arrived on set in Tallinn, Estonia. Even then, they only gave him his own character\u2019s scenes. \u201cHe has a sort of in-house mentality with the people he works with,\u201d Patel says of Nolan. \u201cI had a lot of fun on Tenet and got on really well with him, and I think that has a lot to do with it. He certainly doesn\u2019t need to ask anyone back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPatel grew up in a small village in the middle of England, performed with The Young Actors Company in Cambridge and turned professional at 17 \u2014 spending the next nine years playing the quiet, bookish Tamwar Masood on the British soap EastEnders. His first big break came in 2019, when he scored the lead role in Danny Boyle\u2019s Beatles-inspired rom-com Yesterday. \u201cIn a sense, it was baptism by fire,\u201d he says of the film, \u201cbut it didn\u2019t feel like fire because I had so much support.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the years between Tenet and The Odyssey, Patel appeared in Adam McKay\u2019s Don\u2019t Look Up \u2014 as Jennifer Lawrence\u2019s boyfriend, no less \u2014 and earned an Emmy nomination and a SAG Award for his work in HBO\u2019s Station Eleven, the postapocalyptic miniseries. He was unaware that either the show or his performance was in the awards conversation until the nominations were announced. \u201cNow that I\u2019ve learned how awards work \u2014 all the campaigning and effort that goes into it \u2014 I do feel proud that it was more meritocratic for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPatel (right, with Matt Damon) in Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMelinda Sue Gordon\/Universal Pictures<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Nolan call came at an anxious moment. Patel had been waiting for word on whether HBO would renew The Franchise, the superhero-production spoof in which he starred alongside Daniel Br\u00fchl, Billy Magnussen and Lolly Adefope. When his agents reached out, he assumed that\u2019s what the call was about. It wasn\u2019t. The Franchise cancellation came a few weeks later. \u201cA real shame,\u201d he says \u2014 not just for the show, which he thought was good, but for the cast, with whom he\u2019d become close friends.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe television gods, as it happened, had other plans. He\u2019s currently in Vancouver shooting Ryan Coogler\u2019s long-awaited X-Files reboot (he\u2019s Zooming in wearing a Pacific Northwest-appropriate fleece). He\u2019ll be joined by Station Eleven co-star Danielle Deadwyler \u2014 the two never shared screen time on that series because their characters existed in different timelines, but they met on the Chicago set six years ago and have stayed in touch. He can\u2019t say much, including whether he\u2019ll occupy the Mulder role or the Scully. \u201cThere\u2019s a wall just outside Ryan\u2019s office,\u201d he says, \u201cand they took Polaroids of all of us, and we had to define ourselves as skeptics or believers. I wrote that I\u2019m a believer \u2014 but only one time out of 10.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it comes to The Odyssey, in which Patel plays Eurylochus, Damon\u2019s second-in-command, he can reveal slightly more. For instance, Nolan insisted that his cast use American accents rather than Greek or British. It was the largest production Patel has ever worked on, and he was surprised to find nearly every scene and stunt shot was in-camera with practical effects. It meant spending weeks on a boat in the open ocean, an Imax camera affixed to an adjoining ship and another beaming down from a helicopter overhead. He spent another week in a cave in Greece, then shot from the top of a castle while the cast climbed a mountain over and over.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is implied with every job,\u201d Patel says, \u201cbut it\u2019s most pressing when a director trusts you to be their guy: Don\u2019t fuck this up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo far, so good.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appeared in the June 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly before the holidays in 2024, Emma Thomas \u2014 producer, Christopher Nolan\u2018s wife and the keeper of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[50678,93,189038,61,60,270,83194,211599],"class_list":["post-492844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-entertainment","tag-himesh-patel","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-the-odyssey","tag-thr-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}