Elliot Page says he had unique advantage in gruelling The Odyssey filming

Elliot Page has suggested he had somewhat of an advantage when it came to the gruelling shoot for The Odyssey – and it’s all because of where he is from.

The actor, who plays mythological figure Sinon in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation, spoke to former Awkward star Desi Lydic on The Daily Show on 23 July.

Page has reunited with Nolan on the project, after previously working together on Inception. But it wasn’t their shared history that made The Odyssey shoot a little bit easier.

Lydic said: “I hear that the filming of this was no easy feat; that it was incredibly hard and gruelling at times. You were hiking in water, in mud. All of the actors have been talking about this whole process. What was the hardest day on set for you? Or was it easy, and Matt Damon is just acting like a big baby?”

Laughing, Page replied: “I worked early on in the shoot, and then I was back later in the shoot. To be honest, I couldn’t understand how they were all still standing. I definitely had an easier job than other people.

“The challenging things were just the weather and temperature, but I’m lucky in that I grew up working in Canada as a kid, so I’m used to working in some pretty brutal temperatures.”

Sinon’s appearance in The Odyssey

During the interview, Elliot Page acknowledged that his character Sinon does not appear in Homer’s original, Odyssey.

He said: “The character that I play in this is not originally in The Odyssey, so for me the focus was really on being able to capture him in these few scenes and hopefully make Chris [Nolan] happy.”

Page added: “Getting to work with someone like Chris who obviously has such impeccable vision and execution…. those were the initial conversations I had with Chris about this character and Sinon being this consciousness, facing Odysseus, the impacts of war, the brutality of war, the violence.

“I think I was terrified in wanting to make sure I did an OK job and pulled it off in the movie. It was the good kind of nerves.”

‘Irrelevant’ backlash to Elliot Page

Christopher Nolan said earlier in July that the right-wing backlash to The Odyssey is “irrelevant”.

Before the movie’s release, a number of right-wing pundits, including Riley Gaines and Rob Finnerty, had a lot to say about Page’s casting.

It was originally believed that Page, who is trans, would be playing Achilles, another mythological figure in Greek history, famed for his weak heel.

Finnerty took issue with the fact that a trans man would be playing “the most famous warrior in all of history”, seemingly thinking Achilles was an actual, real person.

Nolan told Variety: “These conversations that happen before people see the film – they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”

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