Tesla CEO and self-proclaimed anti-woke crusader Elon Musk has apparently taken issue with the potential casting of director Christopher Nolan’s upcoming project, The Odyssey. Black Panther actress, Lupita Nyong’o, is confirmed to be involved in the film in an as of yet unconfirmed role.
The cast of The Odyssey is certainly stacked. Nyong’o’s role may not be confirmed, but fans have already begun speculating and spreading rumors regarding what her potential part in the movie could be. It seems most have settled on the actress playing Helen of Troy, a Greek mythological figure who was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, she is most known for supposedly being “the most beautiful woman in the known world,” according to greekmythology.com.
Elon Musk isn’t a fan of Lupita Nyong’o’s casting
Responding to the rumors on X, Musk made his opinion on the casting known as he claimed that director Nolan “has lost his integrity.”
Chris Nolan has lost his integrity
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2026
What exactly this means isn’t clear. Did he think that Nolan shared his beliefs and views about “the woke mind virus?” Furthermore, is a casting choice that Musk personally disagrees with really all it takes to lose one’s integrity?
While Musk doesn’t elaborate on exactly what has upset him about the casting it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what his issue is. Helen of Troy is often depicted as a white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. Nyong’o, of course, identifies as Kenyan-Mexican, which is pretty far from most traditional depictions.
Musk isn’t the only person who has taken issue with the rumor. Unfortunately, casting like this always upsets certain people more than it should. Apparently audiences are fine with the concept of mythological beasts such as cyclops existing in ancient Greece, but they simply can’t accept the idea of a non-white depiction of Helen of Troy.
It’s Christopher Nolan’s movie
At the end of the day it’s just a movie, a movie with plenty of inaccuracies. When historians criticized Nolan’s completely unrealistic choice of armor for the film, most of the director’s fans told them to quit whining and that the aesthetic was more important than accuracy.
Nolan’s fans seem more than happy to defend such errors until a person’s race is brought into the equation, then suddenly everything has to be one-for-one with the source material or else Nolan has no “integrity.”
One person on X did poke at Elon’s hypocrisy when it came to integrity. Bringing up the emails between the CEO and Jeffrey Epstein which were released in the latest batch of documents last week. Perhaps Elon Musk has bigger concerns he should be addressing rather than worrying about who’s going to be playing Helen of Troy in the upcoming The Odyssey film.
