A few weeks into production on The Odyssey, the time had come for the epic Trojan Horse sequence — the one that, as legend has it, saw the Greeks secretly invading the city of Troy and ultimately winning the war. In the film, it begins with Odysseus (Matt Damon) and more than a dozen of his allies, including King of Sparta Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), hiding inside the giant wooden steed. They’re crammed together, silent and patient and ready to explode — and because this is a Christopher Nolan movie, the actors shot it full-tilt, every drop of anxiety and discomfort getting squeezed out for the camera within the horse’s confines.
Blair Getz Mezibov
The scene is staged so that the horse is partially submerged in water. Bernthal drew the short straw of the cast, so he was the one treading neck-deep. The water was supposed to be heated; when cameras began rolling in the Moroccan desert, it was ice cold. Within a few minutes, Bernthal was shivering. Even though Nolan is famously averse to the cozy comforts and shortcuts one might find on other movie sets, he suggested pulling his actor out.
But Bernthal refused. He screamed, “You ain’t breaking me, Chris. There’s nothing you can do to break me.” So Nolan kept filming, and kept filming.
