Last week, Christopher Nolan confirmed that he cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in The Odyssey. Not only that, but Nolan cast Lupita as Helen’s sister Clytemnestra. Within Greek mythology, both Helen and Clytemnestra were born/hatched from eggs laid by a human woman, Leda. Helen and Clytemnestra’s father was the god Zeus, who transformed into a swan to seduce Leda. I love Greek mythology and it’s super-fun to read and study. There is no “historical accuracy” to debate though – it’s not like these people actually existed, nor are there certain actors who are “historically accurate” to the story. A guy from Boston is playing Odysseus. There’s a CGI Cyclopes. A 50-year-old South African woman plays the goddess Calypso. But because Elon Musk and his pitiful groupies are idiots and racists, we still have to talk about this stuff. Yes, Elon is still incandescent with racism that Lupita Nyong’o is playing Helen, and that Zendaya is playing Athena (a goddess).
So, what’s new? Musk is being credibly accused of manipulating Twitter’s algorithm to boost criticism of Christopher Nolan and the film, which no one has seen. Musk has also been reply-guying all over the place. He claims that Nolan has “shown total contempt for Greek people” (???) and Nolan is “pissing on Homer’s grave.” Most historians and Greek mythology classists don’t even think that “Homer” existed as one actual man. At best, “Homer” was a group of people writing down an oral tradition of mythology. Musk also argues, incorrectly, that Nolan hired Black actresses as some kind of DEI scheme to win awards.
Elon Musk is continuing his campaign against Christopher Nolan‘s “The Odyssey,” asserting that the Academy’s diversity guidelines are responsible for the director selecting a diverse array of cast members for the historical epic. “Who specifically is the a–hole who added DEI lies to Academy Awards eligibility instead of it just being about making the best movie?” he asked.
Musk doubled down on his attacks Friday, writing on X, “Chris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award.” Musk’s comments don’t take into consideration the fact that Nolan’s Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer” had a white cast and was Oscar-eligible due to a number of other factors.
You guys. Christopher Nolan already won several Oscars for one of the whitest films I’ve ever seen, Oppenheimer. Historians actually argued that Nolan whitewashed the real story of Oppenheimer, because there were many people of color involved in the Manhattan Project.
And finally, Alec Baldwin chimed in, posting a lovely photo of Lupita with the comment “Dear Elon… but she IS the most beautiful woman in the world…”
This is literally because he put a black woman in a movie pic.twitter.com/Ogyjdm8N9Q
— evan loves worf (@esjesjesj) May 15, 2026
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid, Instagram and Avalon Red.
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- Lupita Nyong’o arrives on the red carpet of the 97th Oscars® at the Dolby® Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 2, 2025.,Image: 971228247, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** EDITORIAL USE ONLY! * NB: Fees charged by Avalon are for Avalon’s services only, and do not, nor are they intended to, convey to the user any ownership of Copyright or License in the material. Avalon does not claim any ownership including but not limited to Copyright or License in the attached material. By publishing this material you (the user) expressly agree to indemnify and to hold Avalon and its directors, shareholders and employees harmless from any loss, claims, damages, demands, expenses (including legal fees), or any causes of action or allegation against Avalon arising out of or connected in any way with publication of the material. * Handling Fee Only ***, Model Release: no , Credit line: Avalon.red/Avalon
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- Hollywood, CA – Celebrities hit the red carpet at the 94th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theater at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood. Pictured: Lupita Nyong’o BACKGRID USA 27 MARCH 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: The Grosby Group / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Washington, DC – Tesla, SpaceX, and X CEO Elon Musk is seen leaving a meeting with Senate Republicans outside the Senate Chamber. Pictured: Elon Musk BACKGRID USA 5 MARCH 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Washington, DC – Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer, Tesla, SpaceX, and X (previously known as Twitter) and Administrator, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) speaks during a press conference with United States President Donald J Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC. Pictured: Elon Musk BACKGRID USA 30 MAY 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Paramount’s New York Premiere Of ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ Featuring: Lupita Nyong’o Where: New York, New York, United States When: 26 Jun 2024 Credit: Janet Mayer/INSTARimages.com
The 1 thing all these trump supporters have in common is they’re all sucks. They’re always whining – not winning – whining. BBoring bunch of sucks.
Can’t wait til we throw his tidy-whitey a— in prison.
I actually loved the casting, but knew the racist would be foaming at the mouth like the rabid mob they are.. it’s truly sad that we can’t celebrate beautiful beyond race, we only get one life and I would rather spend it celebrating the beautiful around us especially the beauty of other races and cultures than hating someone for looking different than I do. I’m just so tired of the screaming racist destroying everything and the South African racists seem to be a special breed of extreme evil.
Matt Damon is like English and Norwegian, where’s the outrage there? Oh right none because it’s just a racist rant from a sick human being
Exactly. You’ve got Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron….none, as far as I know, are Greek or come from Greek heritage (since this is the stupid argument they’re using against Lupita and Zendaya) so it’s so blatantly obvious the real reason these pathetic racists are all up in arms (surprise, surprise). I definitely plan on seeing this film, which was never in question because I love everything Nolan does and it looks like it’s going to be incredible, and I hope it crushes at the box office and wins a shit ton of awards.
It’s great publicity for the film. Completely free. I’m just going with that angle because I can’t start my Sunday weeping for the state of the world.
Would love perspective of any Greek nationals though. Like, there have been exactly one zillion American, English language adaptations of Greek mythology. Do people get territorial about that or do they just grab popcorn?
He’s also butt-sore Elliot Page is playing Achilles, evidently not aware that, canonically, Achilles could pass as a woman.
I know little about how Greek soldiers would’ve realistically looked, but common sense tells me a wiry but strong young man is more likely than a vanity muscled hunk anyway. I love elliot for this role! Far better than a domestic abuser, at any rate. Poor Elon, someone should tell him brads never gonna eff him!
Yes, I vaguely recall that Achilles hid out dressed as a woman. I read the Odyssey in high school and high school was a looooong time ago.
I love Lupita and her physical beauty is stunning but I was always captivated by the lovely personality she has. There is just a light that shines. I haven’t been to the movies in years but guess what. I an going to this movie. Fck that monstrous, vomitous toad and all the disgusting incel, racists that think like him. We are in dangerous times,and everything counts. Vote ,protest and support the cause.
She is next level in Us. So much of the story is told through facial expressions and there is one moment where her face changes just slightly to reveal all.
I consider the movie a masterpiece of psychological (and social justice) horror and it took an actor of immense talent to make it work. So she’s high on my list of actors I’ll see a movie for.
FFS, is this what we are all going to waste our time on while the world burns? Helen didn’t exist, Athena didn’t exist, Achilles didn’t exist, and the Trojan War may or may not have been fought and if it was it was over trade routes or economics. So the correct answer to all of this is who the hell cares. Ignore Musk and his cronies and stop giving them oxygen on things that don’t matter; the movie will make millions. Now eyes back on the prize and try and salvage what is left of the dumpster fire that was once the United States 🙄.
There is a strong likelihood that Musk is a mental case. People should just point and laugh.
The problem is that his money makes him extremely powerful and he’s been unleashed to speak his nazi ideologies with no repercussions. I want to point and laugh, but we also need to call him out for what he’s actually saying.
He’s also regularly high on ketamine. Everyone should mock him, like Trump it *really* gets under his thin skin.
We should just ignore him, but he accompanied trump on his trip to China in some official capacity. We can’t ignore this racist idiot. We need to keep eyes on him.
Has anyone considered the possibility that this apartheid assh*le has no idea what Greek mythology even is? Myths and legends are not historically accurate by definition. They’re just stories. And being so obnoxiously racist that even Alec Baldwin is pissed is not helping Musk’s putrid reputation in the least.
I am glad you continue to cover stories like this, Kaiser. But I’m so, so tired of having to hear what these psychos think about every freaking thing. This self important wang needs to shut his pie-hole and rant to the losers at his secret billionaire club meetings instead of subjecting the rest of us to his ignorant and hateful bile.
In a shocking turn of events, if you Google images of Ancient Greeks there are many with African features. If you further Google marriage between the Ancient Greeks and peoples of Africa, you are regaled with the history of trans Mediterranean commerce that resulted in quite a bit of marriage and procreation. I would have just assumed this to be the case because it’s geography 101, but 🤷♀️
I’d like to thank Elon for making sure I see this in the theater. I was on the fence but now I plan to see it an independent, locally owned theater.
❤️❤️❤️
Remind me when this racist f*ck knuckle earned a Classics degree?
I guess Nolan didn’t get the memo that e was supposed to make white, sausage fests like Oppenheimer for all time.
Obviously Lupita is beyond beautiful so I’m 100% here for her casting as one of mythology’s great beauties (who experienced a ton of stuff even before we get to her meeting Paris). I am also enjoying the truly bonkers nature of Greek myths coming back into conversation (a SWAN?????).
Racists are always gonna racist and let’s just remind ourselves that we also have Clytemnestra as a role model here (as someone who has been described myself as a ‘champion grudge bearer’ I alway loved her), we will remember their actions and the tide will turn.
Funny how nobody whines when white actresses have routinely been cast as Cassiopeia and Andromeda, who were Ethiopian/Eritrean.
In our racist society, white is the default race. Every decision to center someone or something not white must be justified. It’s exhausting fr.
WORD.
Racism—pure and blatant. Even if you think others are *more* beautiful there’s no denying that Lupita is, by any objective standard, a deeply beautiful woman. Diane Kruger, also gorgeous, played her in Troy. She is a blonde German—was that spitting on the Greeks? Somehow I don’t think Elon has a problem with her.
The Odyssey is about a boatload of lunkheads and the many fascinating, strong women in their lives. So, basically, Elon and the women who hurt his fragile ego.
😆😂🤣
Hahahaha
STAY MAD.
Go take care of your children.
Are they mad because a real cyclops isn’t playing Cyclops?
I couldn’t care less what that Nazi racist thinks. Where I live, people drive Teslas that have gone incognito. Small, gray “Tesla” logo on a gray car background., etc. I can always tell it’s Tesla bc of the weird, skinny car handles. Don’t forget — Musk did NOT create the car, he bought the company. And a lot of New Yorkers want the good deal on the Tesla, but they don’t want to take shit from their neighbors and strangers for supporting Musk. So every time I see a Tesla driving by, I say a silent “F-ck you” to the driver.
I flip off every cybertruck I see, occupied or not, moving or parked.
Beaniebean, great response! And if a white woman played Helen (as Musk demands), she wouldn’t be the real Helen either. The poet Homer wrote about her in The Iliad. Did she even really exist or only apocryphal?
And you just know Musk’s Jesus Christ would have to be played by a white actor, even though it’s known he was born in the Middle East.
This is the under-appreciated Christopher Marlowe on Helen of Troy (in the 1604 Dr. Faustus):
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.”
Dr. Faustus and “Sweet Helen” did make Marlowe immortal. He was killed in a fight (by a sword in the eye) when he was 29 years old. He might or might not have been a spy for Queen Elizabeth the First (which could have been the real reason for his death, not the tab for alcohol).
Part of what’s so much fun about Greek mythology is how complicated and internally contradictory it is.
My favorite version of the birth of Helen is the one in which Leda, married to Tyndareus, is seduced by Zeus appearing in the form of a swan — but Leda bears four children from two eggs.
One egg contains Helen, semi-divine daughter of Zeus, and Clytemnestra, mortal daughter of Tyndareus. The other egg produces Pollux, semi-divine son of Zeus, and Castor, mortal son of Tyndareus.
Two fathers, one mother, four children, paired as two sets of full and half siblings, all hatched instead of born. Messy, very messy! 😂
Meanwhile, what really surprises me in all this is not that the World’s Richest Troll is yet again confirmed as an ugly Nazi-cosplaying racist, but that he is totally missing the opportunity to draw the obvious parallel between the Oath of Tyndareus and NATO — which he and Felon47 want to destroy to help out their good buddy Putin.
Seems to me he could be beating the drum about the part of the story in which Odysseus, in order to keep the peace, sets it up that, before the decision of who will marry Helen is made, all the suitors swear a solemn oath to defend the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel with him. But they all end up in a ten-years war over Helen anyway.
This is the beauty of being a dumb racist a-hole. Your stupid racism blinds you to better opportunities to be stupidly, opportunistically destructive.