{"id":440583,"date":"2026-05-22T21:01:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T21:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/440583\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T21:01:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T21:01:14","slug":"lupita-nyongo-shrugs-off-racist-odyssey-backlash-over-helen-of-troy-casting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/440583\/","title":{"rendered":"Lupita Nyong\u2019o shrugs off racist \u2018Odyssey\u2019 backlash over Helen of Troy casting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar winner<\/a> Lupita Nyong\u2019o<\/a> said she\u2019s losing no sleep over racist criticism of her casting as Helen of Troy, the mythic beauty whose face \u201claunched a thousand ships\u201d and ignited the Trojan War.<\/p>\n

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Nyong\u2019o, director Christopher Nolan<\/a> and the producers of \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d<\/a> have faced backlash from a faction of culture war provocateurs questioning why the Kenyan-born actress was cast in the role.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very supportive of Chris\u2019s intention with it and with the version of this story that he is telling,\u201d Nyong\u2019o told Elle magazine <\/a>in an interview published on Thursday. \u201cOur cast is representative of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the critics, Nyong\u2019o said engaging with them would be pointless.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not spending my time thinking of a defense,\u201d she said. \u201cThe criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nolan\u2019s \u201cOdyssey\u201d is slated to be one of the year\u2019s biggest films, with an A-list ensemble that includes Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Elliot Page and Charlize Theron.<\/p>\n

Hype around the movie has been building for more than a year, with tickets for early showings sold out since July. <\/a>The movie debuts July 17.<\/p>\n

But in recent weeks, some right-wing voices have criticized the film, citing what they describe as historical inaccuracies and casting choices designed to appease the left. <\/p>\n

Elon Musk, who has waged a years-long campaign and become one of the most high-profile people<\/a> to take on what he has called the \u201cwoke mind virus,\u201d weighed in on X last week, claiming<\/a> that Nolan <\/a>was being historically inaccurate and capitulating to \u201cDEI lies.\u201d <\/a>Musk, who has 240 million followers on X, also lobbed personal attacks at Nolan <\/a>saying the director \u201cdesecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award.\u201d Early Friday, Musk called Nolan<\/a> \u201can anti-White racist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tech billionaire\u2019s outburst became fodder for late night comic Jimmy Kimmel, who used his show to offer a remedial lesson in Greek mythology to clear up any confusion about Helen of Troy\u2019s nonexistent link to reality. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe was mythical like Santa Claus or election fraud<\/a> (so it) doesn\u2019t matter what color a myth is,\u201d Kimmel told fans on his show this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if you really want to get into it, Helen of Troy was half-bird. Helen was the daughter of Zeus … who disguised himself as a swan so he could mate with a human woman who then laid an egg and out hatched Helen of Troy, who again was not a real person. This is not history, this is made up. She was pretend, so it makes no difference to anyone but crazy, angry people what color she was.\u201d <\/p>\n

Casting choices have increasingly become culture-war flashpoints in debates over representation and historical accuracy. Major Disney remakes \u2014 most notably The Little Mermaid and Snow White<\/a> \u2014 have drawn similar waves of intense but ultimately limited backlash.<\/p>\n

Some on the right have predicted<\/a> the controversy will cost \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d at the box office, though there is little to support that claim. The film\u2019s trailer, which debuted in December, racked up more than 120 million views<\/a> in its first 24 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar winner Lupita Nyong\u2019o said she\u2019s losing no sleep over racist criticism of her casting as Helen of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-440583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}