It seems the race-swapping trend in Hollywood just does not want to die. Even after the box office disaster that was Disney’s ‘Latina Snow White’ movie last year, there is yet another person of colour set to portray a traditionally white character in an upcoming major production. This time, it is one of the great epics of the earliest European literature, Homer’s Odyssey, and the mythical figure of Helen of Troy that gets the Hollywood treatment.
Universal Pictures’ feature film adaptation of the story of Odysseus is set to be released this summer. It is directed by British filmmaker Christopher Nolan, best known for his 2008 picture The Dark Knight.
However, it is not this personnel choice that turned heads. Rather, it was the casting of Kenyan Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o of 12 Years a Slave and Black Panther fame in the role of Helen of Troy that has garnered quite a lot of unpleasant attention.
World’s richest man Elon Musk has also chimed in on his own social media platform X, as he often does in cultural debates. In a thread about the odd casting choice, he wrote ‘Chris Nolan has lost his integrity’ in the replies, receiving over 25,000 likes.
In the original Odyssey by Homer, written in the eighth–seventh century BC, Helen of Troy is featured only briefly, given that the narrative takes place after the Trojan War, in which she was a key figure.
According to the Ancient Greek mythology, Helen is the daughter of the god Zeus and the mortal woman Leda, Queen of Sparta. She is said to be the most beautiful woman on Earth, whose abduction by the Trojan Prince Paris prompted the Trojan War. This, however, is mostly described in the Iliad, another epic poem by Odyssey author Homer.
As for physical descriptions, she is explicitly referred to as ‘fair’ in the Iliad, which suggests she had light skin. She is also repeatedly compared to goddesses, who, in turn, are described as ‘white-armed’. Consequently, her character has been portrayed by white actresses in previous famous films. In the 1924 silent film Helena, she was played by Italian actress Edy Darclea; while in the 1956 American–French–Italian co-produced picture Helen of Troy, she was played by Rossana Podestà, another actress native to Italy.
In ancient visual arts, such as a fresco in Pompeii, Italy, she is also painted in the figure of a white, brown-haired woman. This is very logical, as it falls in line with European beauty standards at the time of the Odyssey’s writing.
Universal Pictures needs to be careful not to alienate large parts of its potential audience, as its upcoming Odyssey movie has a massive production budget of $250 million. There are plenty of cautionary tales of a similar fashion to pay heed to.
In addition to the 2025 Snow White movie cited above, in 2023, the streaming giant Netflix released its original series Queen Cleopatra. Cleopatra, another female figure of mythical beauty, was portrayed by another black actress, Adele James. What made matters worse that time was that Cleopatra was an actual historical figure with well-documented Greek ancestry, thus her skin was provably not black—rather, either white or light olive.
This depiction of the Egyptian queen angered audiences in her home country of Egypt the most, even prompting a public response from a Former Minister of Antiquities of Egypt, who dismissed the series as ‘false history’.
The Netflix series ended up becoming a massive flop and sits on a 1.2 audience rating on IMDb.
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