The Tom Hollands have come together for a search engine-confusing conversation about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey — and broken the internet.
British actor Tom Holland, playing Telemachus in the film, joined his fellow countryman, the historian and The Rest Is History co-host Tom Holland, to discuss the extraordinary scale of the adaptation, acting in Imax, and balancing the movie’s historical reality with ancient myth.
The Rest Is History sit-down — which prompted a good few Spider-Man meme reactions, in reference to the actor’s upcoming MCU outing — also comes as the historian finds himself at the center of an unlikely culture-war clash with Elon Musk over Nolan’s film. Musk has launched something of a campaign against The Odyssey, riling up a herd of social media critics who call the movie’s diverse casting, such as Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, too “woke,” despite wide acknowledgement that Homer’s work is, of course, a piece of fiction.
The podcast host was invited to the star-spangled London premiere of the blockbuster, and would later take aim at the naysayers: “More praise for The Odyssey from people who — shockingly — have actually waited to see it before giving their opinion.” Musk responded, as he often does on the platform: “Tom Holland is such a cuck.” But the historian simply doubled down. “Very happy to say it again,” he wrote on X. “The Odyssey is an amazing film, and missing out on seeing it because you think it’s woke or whatever is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Your loss.”
