The lore of Christopher Nolan putting his The Odyssey cast through their paces continually continues, with what turned out to be a pretty “heavy Advil” phase of the shoot now coming to the forefront.
The film’s lead Matt Damon, who famously had to get shredded for his six-pack to play Odysseus, appeared on Radio Andy recently to discuss some of the most physically brutal moments of filming.
As it turns out, running through the fictional version of Troy itself was not a particularly pleasant experience, especially for the half of the cast that’s full of older, industry heavyweights.
“What we had were…a lot of us are middle-aged people, and what we got was back pain,” Matt, 55, quipped. “Oh my god, running through Troy, it’s all stone. And you’re in these sandals, and they’re very real.”
“Our feet were all scuffed up,” he shared, although noted that the strain on their back was the worst part. “But more than the little scratches and cuts on your feet, it was the back pain for us. It was a heavy Advil movie in those weeks where we were doing that action stuff.”
The Odyssey’s difficult production
While production for the newest Nolan epic generally went according to plan, it still proved to be quite a trying experience for its cast, who had to face natural and man-made elements to create the authenticity of Odysseus’ long journey home.
Robert Pattinson recalled to GQ of the experience of being a month into the shoot: “I was sitting in the hotel bar by myself, and then people started drifting in, and I’ve never seen people look so exhausted. And this was only a third of the way.”
© Getty Images“I started a third of the way through the movie, and they’d already been to [two] countries by that point and people just looked like…. I mean, at the end of every day people were broken.”
The Odyssey was shot for just about three months in 2025 across six different countries, with the director creating a whopping two million feet of IMAX film.
Tom Holland remembered first arriving on set as such: “I remember walking down this beach for half an hour, and I’m just seeing Greek soldier, Greek soldier, Greek boat, Greek soldier, the Trojan wars, Greek boat, Greek soldier for….”
© Getty Images“I don’t know if I’m exaggerating, but it felt like miles. And I’m saying to the PA: ‘Where is the crew? I haven’t seen any evidence of a film set. This is more reminiscent of a reenactment than it is a film set.'”
For the Good Will Hunting star, though, the larger-than-life experience was one he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to live through again. “It’s a little bewildering.”
© Getty Images“Because of where the movie business is going, it was a really weird movie for me personally, in the sense that I had almost a nostalgic feeling the entire time I was making it, because it felt like movies were when I started working. And I know that that’s going away. I knew that this was the last chance I was ever going to have to do something like this.”
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