Christopher Nolan<\/a> approached him to play Telemachus, the son of Odysseus (Matt Damon) and Penelope (Anne Hathaway), in the adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic.<\/p>\nSpeaking alongside Christopher and Matt, both 55, and Anne, 43, Tom, 30, told the new issue of PEOPLE magazine: “To be honest, when I got home after our meeting, I sat down with Z and was like, ‘I\u2019ve been offered this movie.’<\/p>\n
“And she was like, ‘By who?’ And I was like, ‘It\u2019s the big one.’ And she was like, ‘Chris?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it\u2019s Chris Nolan.'”<\/p>\n
\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Tom was concerned about scheduling conflicts between The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day.<\/p>\n
\nBut 29-year-old Zendaya – who plays ancient Greek goddess Athena in The Odyssey, and MJ in Spider-Man: Brand New Day – encouraged him to accept Christopher’s offer.<\/p>\n
\nTom added: “And then we had Spider-Man that was literally scheduled to go the same day that we would start shooting. Z said, ‘I\u2019ll leave you if you don\u2019t do The Odyssey.'”<\/p>\n
\nFollowing laughter from Matt, Anne, and Christopher, the latter quipped: “Yes. Well, thank you to her.”<\/p>\n
\nTom added: “Here I am.”<\/p>\n
\nFor a long time, Christopher has wanted to work with Tom – who asked Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group chairman-and-CEO Tom Rothman, 71, to delay production of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, in which the star plays the Marvel comic book superhero, so he could make The Odyssey.<\/p>\n
\nChristopher explained: “Tom was somebody I hadn\u2019t worked with before, but I\u2019ve admired his work for years and really wanted to work with him, and so we met, and I convinced him to do it.”<\/p>\n
\nHe added: “It wasn\u2019t easy jamming in between a lot of different things. He\u2019s a very busy young man, but this family came together and obviously Anne, this is the third time we\u2019ve worked together, and I\u2019m just thrilled that these guys all agreed to come on board.”<\/p>\n
\nChristopher continued: “I like to say it was a hard shoot, but hard in the right way. They rose to it magnificently.”<\/p>\n
\nEarlier this month, Zendaya said being cast with Tom in The Odyssey was “the dream”.<\/p>\n
\nShe told Extra: “I remember when he got the call, I was, like, absolutely over the moon, so excited, so proud.<\/p>\n
\n“And then never did it\u2026 cross my mind that a second call would be coming to our home, you know? So, that was so special.<\/p>\n
\n“And yeah, just to be able to share something like that and watch him work in this context\u2026 It\u2019s the dream… It’s absolutely the dream. So, I was happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIn another interview, Zendaya revealed she was “already on Cloud Nine” for her husband when he got the call.<\/p>\n
\nShe told the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast: “And then he came home and said, \u2018I need you to read something.\u2019<\/p>\n
\n“And I was like, \u2018Is it that thing we were just reading the other night?\u2019 And he was like [nods head], \u2018But now read it thinking of this character [Athena].\u2019<\/p>\n
\n“And I was like, \u2018Shut up! You\u2019re joking!\u2019 It was pretty cool.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
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\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"16 July 2026 Zendaya jokingly threatened to \u201cleave\u201d her husband, Tom Holland, if he declined to star in The Odyssey. Couple Tom Holland and Zendaya The 30-year-old actor did “a lot of thinking” after director Christopher Nolan approached him to play Telemachus, the son of Odysseus (Matt Damon) and Penelope (Anne Hathaway), in the adaptation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[587,16097,2586,15937,1143,5279,16092,3613,1312,16096,1284,6568,1092],"class_list":{"0":"post-252121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-anne-hathaway","9":"tag-athena","10":"tag-christopher-nolan","11":"tag-homer","12":"tag-matt-damon","13":"tag-mj","14":"tag-odysseus","15":"tag-penelope","16":"tag-spider-man","17":"tag-telemachus","18":"tag-tom-holland","19":"tag-tom-rothman","20":"tag-zendaya"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}