Recommendations of the Editorial team
Director Christopher Nolan explains his decision to cast rap superstar Travis Scott in his upcoming epic “The Odyssey”: The musician’s presence should underline the story’s roots in the oral storytelling tradition – a tradition he compares to hip-hop.
“I cast him because I wanted to allude to the fact that this story was passed down as oral poetry – which is very similar to rap,” Nolan told Time about Scott’s role in the film.
Speculation about Scott’s role came to a head earlier this year after a trailer for “The Odyssey” was released. Fans recognized it as a mysterious figure who looked strikingly similar to the Grammy-nominated rapper. The film, starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya and Charlize Theron, is already causing a stir in advance – as the first full-length feature film to be shot entirely on IMAX cameras. The cinema release is scheduled for July 17th.
Nolan’s creative freedom after “Oppenheimer”
In the interview, Nolan also looked back on how the massive success of his 2023 film “Oppenheimer” paved the way for the project. The Oscar-winning drama grossed almost a billion dollars worldwide and won several Academy Awards – which gave the director significantly more artistic freedom. “It opened up options for me,” Nolan said. “What has really never been done before is a cinematic adaptation of ‘The Odyssey’ using all the resources of a major Hollywood studio production. That’s a strange gap in film history.”
Scott, who contributed a track to the soundtrack of Nolan’s 2020 film “Tenet,” is best known as a musician, but has steadily increased his film appearances in recent years. His credits include “Gully,” “Aggro Dr1ft,” the documentary “Look Mom I Can Fly,” and appearances on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Kardashians.”
Scott joins a small but illustrious list of musicians that Nolan has brought in front of the camera over the years. David Bowie famously played inventor Nikola Tesla in 2006’s The Prestige, while Harry Styles took on the role of Alex in Dunkirk – one of his first major acting gigs.
