Travis Scott Shares How Christopher Nolan Persuaded Him for ‘The Odyssey’

Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ has spent much of the past year addressing questions that no one anticipated a Homer adaptation would generate, with most inquiries revolving around one name. Long before the film’s cast gathered in London, the internet had already deemed Travis Scott’s involvement in a $250 million retelling of ancient Greek myth as one of the most surprising casting choices of Nolan’s career.

This week, the story behind that casting choice was finally revealed, directly from Scott himself. He walked the red carpet at the world premiere of ‘The Odyssey’ in Leicester Square on Monday, joined by Matt Damon, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, and the rest of the film’s extensive ensemble, all gathered beneath a towering wooden Trojan horse for the event.

During an interview at the premiere, Scott finally addressed how he came to play a bard in Nolan’s interpretation of the Trojan War saga. He shared with Deadline that it all began with a personal phone call. “I just got a call from Nolan. We had this crazy idea,” Scott recounted, explaining that he was immediately on board with whatever the director envisioned, without any questions about the specifics.

This casual explanation fits a casting decision that has, until now, faced more scrutiny than a twelve-second red carpet response typically warrants. In the film, Scott portrays a bard in the court of Ithaca, singing and reciting while Penelope, played by Hathaway, fends off a multitude of suitors during Odysseus’s prolonged absence.

Nolan had previously attempted to preempt the criticism months ago. In an interview published in May, he explained his rationale for casting a musician, framing it as a deliberate homage to how Homer’s epic has survived for centuries as oral poetry passed down by performers, which he views as a direct ancestor of rap itself. This wasn’t their first collaboration, as Scott had previously contributed the track ‘The Plan’ to Nolan’s 2020 film ‘Tenet’.

Despite this explanation, the backlash did not completely dissipate. Critics and fans online spent months dissecting the logic, with some highlighting the contradiction between Nolan’s well-known commitment to historical accuracy—evidenced by building a seaworthy ship for the production—and a casting choice that heavily references modern culture. Others were more lenient, suggesting that Scott’s previous work with Nolan provided sufficient grounds for the bold decision.

Whatever doubts may have lingered seem to have been overshadowed, at least for now, by the response to the completed film. Critics who attended Monday’s premiere and subsequent press screenings largely described ‘The Odyssey’ as one of Nolan’s most significant achievements, praising the scale of its battle sequences and the performances from Damon, Holland, Hathaway, and Lupita Nyong’o in particular.

The London event marked the first stop on what is expected to be a wide-ranging global rollout ahead of the film’s July 17 release. Notably, Universal opted to skip the usual early influencer screenings, allowing critics and press to view the film first. Given the production’s tendency to reveal very little ahead of time, Scott’s brief remarks to Deadline were treated as a genuine scoop, even though he refrained from detailing what the “crazy idea” behind his casting entailed.

For a film that has maintained such a high level of secrecy, even a small detail like a phone call from Nolan carries significant weight. Whether Scott’s performance will ultimately win over the skeptics once ‘The Odyssey’ hits theaters remains the larger question looming over the film’s release.

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