Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Artisans Reveal the Design and Casting Behind Samantha Morton’s Circe

Casting director John Papsidera has a long-standing collaborative history with Christopher Nolan, dating back to the director’s 2000 breakthrough film, Memento. For Nolan’s highly anticipated adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, Papsidera was tasked with assembling an expansive and prestigious cast to bring the legendary myth to life. The project only truly crystallized for him upon reading the screenplay, revealing the grand scale of Nolan’s vision for the classical text.

Speaking at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival during a crafts panel, Papsidera opened up about his collaborative dynamic with the director, noting that Nolan often approaches casting with spontaneous challenges. “I don’t get any heads-up,” Papsidera explains. “He loved to give me a pop quiz: ‘Who do you think? What do you think?’ And that’s how the process began.” He revealed that Nolan envisioned Odysseus as an American, specifically conceptualizing him as a “worker among workers, an everyman.”

Papsidera continued by explaining that they went through their typical roster of frequent collaborators before settling on Matt Damon to play Odysseus. “We started to coalesce around Matt, thinking it was a really great idea — different for Matt — and what he had done in Oppenheimer was really special in that film,” Papsidera noted. With Damon anchoring the lead role, the rest of the ensemble cast began to fall into place.

One of the most crucial elements of the casting process was finding the perfect actress to portray the enchantress Circe. In Homer’s original poem, Circe is depicted as a beautiful temptress who manipulates soldiers. However, in Nolan’s cinematic adaptation, Odysseus and his men encounter a powerful witch who transforms his crew into pigs.

Papsidera explained that Circe’s deceptive nature—appearing one way before revealing her true, witchlike identity—was central to the search. “She appears one way and then turns into something else; that’s the witchlike quality of her,” Papsidera said. After considering various actresses, they landed on Samantha Morton, whom Papsidera praises as brilliant and brave. “Chris sparked to it because he’s always been a fan of Samantha. You just felt the sense that she was going to invent something remarkable for that chapter — something interesting, scary, and still showing human vulnerability in the beginning.”

Joining Papsidera in discussing the film’s massive physical scope was production designer Ruth De Jong.

De Jong and Nolan traveled globally to scout breathtaking and authentic locations. A fifth-century castle in Italy, perched approximately 1,030 feet above sea level, was selected to represent Ithaca. De Jong also designed multiple massive Trojan horses, each standing around 35 feet tall. The beaches of Essaouira on Morocco’s Atlantic coast served as the discovery site of the Trojan horse and the launching point for Odysseus’s return journey. By the numbers, the set of Troy was a monumental achievement, spanning over 2.5 acres (more than 110,000 square feet) and accommodating up to 2,000 extras alongside over 60 custom-built structures.

For Circe’s isolated sanctuary, De Jong explained that they actively avoided the stereotypical “Hansel and Gretel” fairytale aesthetic. “We absolutely did not want a Hansel-and-Gretel version in the woods. But we didn’t know where in the world Circe needed to land to work,” she noted. The choice wasn’t about geographic prestige, but rather about finding the right flora, fauna, and landscape. “We were after the flora and fauna, the landscape and what the backdrop gave us. This just so happened to be Scotland.” De Jong elaborated that Circe’s domain needed to be coastal, as Odysseus and his hungry men would spot smoke and hunt nearby. They settled on a dramatic cliffside in the Scottish Highlands, constructing her dwelling right on the edge where a misstep would mean a fatal fall. “Chris and I grabbed onto the topography and I designed it all based on the craggy rocks that existed. We played with the idea that maybe she commandeered or took over this house we built — maybe someone else had been there previously. Maybe it was just a bunch of ruins that she had repurposed. We sculpted Athena’s head, added animals, and just had a lot of fun with it.”

When it came to Circe’s costume, costume designer Ellen Mirojnick faced the task of dressing Circe with a specific directive from Nolan: like the other goddesses Calypso and Athena, Circe was to be grounded in reality. “Chris insisted that these goddesses were to be real — women who were independent and took care of themselves at all costs. There was nothing fantastical about it,” Mirojnick explained.

Mirojnick shared that she sent a conceptual sketch to Morton, who was incredibly receptive to the design. “She was so open, and in the sketch, we decided that her witchlike quality would be apparent. She’d be a female character, but her costume would indicate both male and female traits,” Mirojnick said. The design featured rugged leather, belts, and various accouterments collected from travelers who had passed through her door, grounding the character firmly in her ancient, mysterious past.

Papsidera also discussed the casting of the core family dynamic, selecting Tom Holland to play Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, and Anne Hathaway as Queen Penelope. “Anne was me,” Papsidera admitted. “Tom, we arrived upon.” He explained that just as they humanized the historical figures in Oppenheimer by giving them faces rather than leaving them anonymous, they needed to treat the mythological figures of The Odyssey with similar reverence. “All of these people were the superheroes of their time. All of these characters needed to be larger than life… To pay respect to that, we knew we had to cast them in a bigger way.”

He added that when narrowing down the choices for a role like Telemachus, Holland stood out immediately. “When you boil down how many actors are really right for a role like Telemachus, you come to Tom pretty quickly,” Papsidera stated. The casting team aimed to root each character in a tangible reality while honoring their larger-than-life status as legendary figures, ensuring that every encounter along Odysseus’s journey felt distinct and memorable.

De Jong concluded the panel by comparing her collaborative dynamic with Nolan to “playing basketball with Kobe Bryant.” She praised his intense, yet open approach to the creative process: “I love somebody who is going to the mat and not say, ‘That’s difficult.’ Every day was difficult on this job. Any one of us could go up to Chris and it’s open communication. Conversation is there, and it’s open.”

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