Lupita Nyong’o demands fans accept Helen of Troy in The Odyssey

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Probably the worst thing that could have happened regarding the Odyssey kind of just did. So, Lupita Niongo, who was confirmed to be playing Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, has finally spoken out against her detractors. And the results are, well, not very good, let me tell you. But before we begin, let's thank the sponsor of this video, Game Boost. Let's be real, sometimes you want to buy a game, but you don't like paying full price.

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[00:01:17]And Game Boost also has the ability to gift the keys you buy at a discount on PC as well, which can then be used on Steam, Ubisoft, Connect, Epic Games, and much more. So, if you're looking for your next game to binge, want to top up your currency in a game, or want a certain item or cosmetic, Game Boost has you covered. This all began with Deadines article titled, "Lupita Nongo says she's not spending my time dignifying the Odyssey's racist casting criticisms." So, this article references another article by L Magazine, which is where this is derived from. At one point during this interview, Leita said this, "This is a mythological story. I'm very supportive of Christopher Nolan's intention with it and with the version of the story that he is telling. Our cast is representative of the world. I'm not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not. So, this is a surefire way to skirt the blame and claim that none of this is your fault in the end anyways. But it also confirms that the Odyssey is at its core nothing but really a skin suit of Greek mythology and stories that are wrapped in a cast meant to be, as she said, representing the world. I didn't know that Greece was apparently the entire world. I guess I forgot that part in geography, but it is very interesting how Lepita conveniently tries to paint the entire backlash as a nothing burger because she financially benefits from being involved, of course. But she had more to say, too. It's quite something to be part of. the Odyssey because it is so grand. It spans worlds. So that's why the cast is what it is. We're occupying the epic narrative of our time. That really doesn't make a lick of sense. And every time something is attempted to be justified here, it instead just comes off that this is not really meant to be a Greek ccentric story, but a story meant for the world. Now, do I think people who aren't Greek can't enjoy the Odyssey? Well, of course not. There are lessons and wonders to be found in stories from all over. But to reduce the unique calling that this is at its core a story written by Greeks for Greeks in a time where Greece was homogeneous, it cannot be understated. There's no way that Homer would know that his epic would one day be transformed into a Hollywood production because obviously none of that even existed when it was written in the first place. So there's really no point in trying to say that it's a story that was meant for everyone when it clearly wasn't. So descriptive the story of its cultural identity and whisk it up in a new global approach now that the people who made it are not with us obviously anymore. It demeans its roots for the sake of diversity checks.

[00:03:44]Let's call it what it is. And according to Lepita, there is no source that she can pull from when it comes to Helen. As she says here, you can't perform beauty.

[00:03:52]I want to know who a character is. What is beyond beauty? What is beyond looks?

[00:03:56]That's the thing about doing such a well-known text which has been studied and interpreted and derived from. The research could be endless. The good thing about working with a writer like Christopher Nolan is that it's on the page. The investigation starts with the pages you're given. That's what I based it on. So, she confirms it that she based her character on what Christopher Nolan wrote about Helen of Troy, but not Helen as she was depicted by Homer in his own story. That is clearly confirmed by Lepita's own words, which that cannot be denied. She said that. That's in the magazine's article. I understand it's an adaptation, but either way, it's a story that is directly tied to Greek mythology. Sure, there might be some Greeks in the background, but not a single actor in a leading role. It's racist. Let's just call it how it is.

[00:04:40]Probably the most damning was that Lepita Niongo of her own free will confirms via this L magazine interview as seen there in the very first opening paragraphs of this interview that she did not in fact know the Odyssey even existed prior to getting cast as Helen of Troy.

[00:04:58]Yet she confirms that she went to Yale University apparently and did monologues based on Greek mythology on studying when she was there. Yet she somehow didn't know this piece. arguably the most famous that ever existed. That is baffingly stupid to admit, but um I guess that's out in the open now. But she had more to say. I really had no idea what the Odyssey was. I was like, "Oh snap. I don't know the first thing about this." So, it was a crash course.

[00:05:23]I picked up the books and read them immediately. I have this film to thank for my Greek mythological education. And by picked up the books, she really means that she did read the Odyssey, but she also listened to other works around that as well via an audio book. And for good reason. Audrey McDonald reads it. She says by way of explanation in between sips of hot lemon water. It is the best audio book I have ever listened to. Good lord almighty. So not only did she not know that the Odyssey existed, but she went to Yale and learned about said Greek mythology and she listened to audio books. Like what are we even doing at this point? Like this is the most This is a job for me and that's it take ever pretty much. It's so clear that Lepita doesn't actually care at all about the Odyssey. To her it's really just a paycheck. and she saw no problems with herself being cast as someone she looks nothing like cuz it would just fill her bank account. I guess Lepita also states as I highlighted that she thinks that Helen of Troy is iconic which is rich considering she didn't even know who she was when she was cast as it like I swear to God right like Hollywood truly is being ran by chameleons cuz these people are interchangeable at this point when it comes to their opinions. She also confirms, as I highlighted there, that Lepita had the ability to give her own opinion on Helen of Troy would look down to her hair, her makeup, and even her costume, which again, that also kind of makes no sense cuz obviously she's not Greek. So, what could she even say that would help this character out if she has no ties to its origins? It would be like me being casted as Martin Luther King and me somehow saying, "Oh, yeah, I know what it's like to have hair like his."

[00:06:50]When I so obviously do not. It's a LAR being pushed by a chameleon again and echoed by Yesmen who just want to retain their access as all this is. I'll get back to Lepita, but Nolan also spoke to L magazine about her role in the movie as seen here where Nolan confirms that she was his one and only choice for Helen, which is baffling. And Nolan confirms there at the bottom that he was desperate to get Lepita Niongo involved with the project. Which tells me that while sure Nolan may be looking at actors based on their A-list status and their legitimacy, ultimately he likely never even once considered this to be a story about Greek people that are for Greek people only to begin with. He instead always intended, based on his own words anyways, to cast people who weren't Greek in the first place. So the whole thing is confirmed by design, not meant to honor the authenticity of the story or where those people came from either. As Lepita keeps doubling down on the legitimacy of her casting, she then again says this. This is a mythological story, right? Which is interesting coming from her because the last time Lepita was cast in a role. When it came to the story or like the myths of a people, she had a very very different answer compared to now. And I swear that what I'm about to talk about is going to matter. This is related to the Odyssey.

[00:08:03]Let me explain it, okay? Just trust me.

[00:08:06]So, a few years back, Lepita Niongo walked away from a leading role in the movie called The Woman King. If you remember this movie, it was about the Agaj female warriors who protected their king in the nation of Dhomi. The reason why this particular movie got so much backlash was because the movie was not even a retelling of authentic events. It was actually a massive rewrite of what happened to make the kingdom of Deomie seem far more nobler than it actually was. You see, the Dohomi Kingdom was a central hub for the trade of African slaves. It wasn't a slave trade controlled by white people, but the actual king of Dhomi at the time, who John Boyyga plays in the film. He's the guy who sold his own people and those of other conquered African tribes around to other countries for goods and money. The king that that John Boyyga plays in the in the movie, by the way, he's literally called the slave king by people. Like, that's how much they like this was a part of their like whole reality.

[00:08:59]Anyways, this made Dhomi very rich because they were effectively selling their own people for riches and they just didn't care. Of course, Hollywood nor your history teacher will ever tell you that this is true when it absolutely is. The Deomie Kingdom was actually so evil when it came to their African slave economy. They were only really stopped once the French came in and then decimated their forces. This was called the Franco Domain War. There were like two phases to this. Okay. So, as seen here by asking Google, in the first war in 1890, only about 16 French soldiers were slain and the second war which lasted about 2 years resulted in an accumulated total of 300 casualties for the French ultimately. And the majority of that was not actually due to warfare but diseases within Africa itself that the French I guess contracted or whatever. However, on the Dhomi side of this equation, the numbers were far more devastating. The overall loss of life was somewhere between 2,000 to 4,000 Dehomie warriors with about 500 to a thousand of them being slain during that first war in which the French lost only 16 soldiers in comparison. The second war resulted in many more being slain.

[00:10:04]And as they say there at the bottom there, once the Dehomie's capital city fell to the French, all in total there was about 8,000 people who were wounded amidst all the chaos. The majority of the casualties, however, weren't actually the male warriors, but actually the female ones, the agogoji, the very female warriors depicted as the heroes in the woman king. As Google says here, the agaji bore the brunt of the heavy frontline losses. Out of roughly 1,200 female fighters who entered the second war, the vast majority were slain. In a single engagement, the Battle of Edagon, the French bayonet charges slew 417 female warriors in a matter of hours, effectively decimating the core. Also, very sorry that I need to censor certain words cuz of YouTube, but as you can see, this is what the woman king was based on. Okay, and circling this back to Lepita Niongo. So, she was originally cast to star in that movie alongside Viola Davis as one of these Agaji Warriors. And the reason for why Lepita Niongo dropped out of the Woman King was because she had actually done a series right before she was supposed to film this movie that was called Warrior Women with Lepita Nionga where Lepita herself dives into the complicated and awful history of the Dehomie Kingdom and the people and how they sold their own people to slavery and all the history in that. So the general consensus then was that Lepita walked away from the woman king because she learned the truth about the dohomi people which was that they were actually kind of you know not the good guys as that movie was trying to portray them as that she was supposed to star in. And so because of her learning lido walked away from that movie to wash her hands of that and didn't want to clearly be a part of it because of the propaganda involved within it. Plus again, the name the woman king makes no sense because there is no female king in the movie. It's just a feminist power fantasy name meant to evoke power while making also no sense. It would be like calling a movie about Batman the alien man when Batman isn't an alien, but Superman is, but it sounds interesting.

[00:12:03]So, you would use that instead to get butts and seats. That's kind of what The Woman King pretty much is. But it just doesn't make any sense either way. It was very obviously a movie created to be Oscar bait, yet it ended up not being that at all cuz it got nominated for nothing. The film also depicted the doi fighting the Portuguese instead because I guess if they chose French the movie would then be more aptly named the woman decimation would that would actually be more accurate at least. Either way, the reason why I bring up the woman king in a video about the Odyssey is to convey to you through evidence that Lupita Niongo is a hypocrite because she was very obviously able to understand why being in the woman king would be seen as problematic. Yet despite this, she saw nothing wrong with Helen of Troy. Of course, she may try to say, "Well, one is mythology, one is history." But either way, both stories are tied to their people, their customs, and their very way of life, right? This means that the Odyssey should be respected. The same way that any story or mythology of any people is too. But that clearly isn't the case. And likely the reason why she didn't say no to the Odyssey is simple. It's because of money. And it's Christopher Nolan. So, she can obviously springboard off that for more offers, too. It's smart on her move. No doubt about that. genius even. But either way, it's gross and that's the point. Lepita brings up Sinners as a good example in her mind of what studio should be making. As she says here, this is an industry where commerce is governing the art. The commercial part of it is unimaginative. Something like Sinners will happen and then every studio will look for its new vampire movie. So, the lack of imagination exists anyhow and then it's just exacerbated by the racial component. Interesting how you bring up racial components while portraying something that you look nothing like.

[00:13:41]It's very interesting how she does that.

[00:13:43]It's clear she's obviously smart enough to understand what being hypocritical means, yet despite this, continues to do it anyways. Either way, Lepita's reaction to the backlash is exactly why things are going the way that they are.

[00:13:57]Because it perfectly conveys why people are increasingly frustrated with modern Hollywood these days is not because of hate, diversity, or being afraid of change. I'm just going to say it how it is. It's a blatant double standard that they are doing. And it's clear that the more that they do it, the more people are unwilling to ignore it. Ancient Greece is the foundation of a real civilization. Obviously, it's not a playground to disrespect because you want to. And personally, I'm tired of Hollywood treating every established setting as something that can be endlessly reshaped to fit modern ideology trends like they always do.

[00:14:31]That's why this is annoying. It's as if the feeling of authenticity always comes second to the social messaging aspect.

[00:14:39]And what frustrates me even more is that Hollywood executives or in this case even the actors who constantly just act confused about why people are upset about whatever choice it is in the first place. This is why what Lepita Niango said about all of this is not really helping anything. Because instead of acknowledging why audiences care about historical consistency, which she clearly understands that, or knowing why mythology matters to people because it absolutely does, her response once again framed criticism as something backwards or unreasonable according to her. And this is why her sudden lack of self-awareness completely disappears when you place it up against what I showed you with The Woman King, right?

[00:15:20]because Hollywood or Lepita even only seems to support the idea of oh accuracy doesn't matter when it only goes in one direction that they favor and that's the double standard that people are pointing out because it does really matter. We all know if a studio altered African folklore, historical epics or culturally important stories in the opposite direction, then Hollywood would suddenly instantly understand why authenticity actually matters. Oh, representation would become extremely important to them and cultural preservation would suddenly matter. But when it comes to European mythology or western classics, the rules magically change, don't they? And it's that inconsistency that keeps harming the trust in why many no longer really trust these studios because like how can you? The Odyssey removed, it's really about anything. We can't claim to be about authentic representation. If we can just magically change what these words mean on a dime, then it didn't matter in the first place, then did it?

[00:16:16]Hollywood then is just pretending that audiences are the problem when it's them who are deeply disconnected from what's actually going on. The simple truth is, if you want respect, you have to give it. If you're adapting a story about Greek mythology, then people are going to expect Greek people in a Greek mythology film, not global nonsense.

[00:16:35]Okay? Greek. And if you want to adapt historical settings, fictional or not, you break that immersion immediately when you make everything just look like downtown Seattle over wherever you're setting the story in. And the more studios appear willing to rewrite foundational stories for modern optics, which keeps happening, let's be real, the more cynical the audiences are just going to become. But they can't really blame or say that backlash just didn't come out of nowhere because Hollywood created it themselves. It's their fault.

[00:17:04]yet they still refuse to know it or acknowledge it. The amount of poor controversial decisions that are being made only to result in negative receptions is getting too much.

[00:17:14]Executives or even actors really can accuse audiences of intolerance all they want, right? But they just refuse to learn from criticism. People feel like they are constantly being told that their attachment to say mythology, history or even source material is somehow less important than the industry's desire to just modernize everything. And that is what is happening here. And eventually all that can really happen is what happened to like Star Wars even, right? Complete apathy. That's the worst possible scenario and they know it. The reason that this controversy keeps exploding online every single time a new thing gets revealed about it is because it taps into something much bigger than just Helen of Troy. People are tired of feeling like every classic story has become a battleground for modern ideology because it absolutely has. We just want escapism again. But when the avenues for said escapism don't even allow for that, well, what is even left then? We want storytelling that feels timeless, not politically curated. And every time Hollywood dismisses you or calls these concerns meaningless in their eyes, it will just keep getting worse because people are no longer convinced that this movie industry really respects the material that it adapts. And I mean, am I even lying about that? They really are trying to update everything for approval points instead of preserving what made these stories resonate in the first place. The entire point of why people love the Odyssey is because it's uniquely Greek.

[00:18:46]The same way you love anything because of what it's tied to, the people and all that, the culture. If you remove that, well, then it's pointless. It loses all its meaning. It becomes nothing. And that's such a travesty to do. Because if by removing what makes something unique is the only way Hollywood sees that thing as something worth adapting in the first place, then I have to ask, why even do it in the first place? What's even the point? All of this just for a small golden statue that's going to collect dust on a shelf somewhere. Is an entire nation's history really worth something like that? I guess it is to some at least. And thanks again to Game Boost for sponsoring this video. Make sure to check the link in description or pinned comment to get 5% off your purchase. Thanks again to Game Boost.

[00:19:31]But let me ask you then, is this backlash even justified or is Hollywood right to reinterpret mythology for modern audiences as they see fit? I guess let me know what you think as always. But thanks for watching.

[00:19:42]Subscribe if you want to. But personally, if the woman king was too far for Lepita Niongo, so too should have been the Odyssey. But whenever it's a European story, magically respecting the origins of what came before doesn't matter magically. And I am personally just so sick of This