Matt Damon jokes 8 A listers turned down ‘The Odyssey’ before him

The Oscar winner laughed off the film's all star casting story while praising Christopher Nolan's epic adventure

Matt Damon has revealed that landing the lead role in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey came with a healthy dose of humour, joking that a long list of Hollywood stars had turned the project down before it eventually reached him.

During a promotional interview for the highly anticipated film, Damon quipped that he only ended up playing Odysseus because "Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Matthew McConaughey, John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Cillian Murphy and Hugh Jackman all passed." The remark was delivered as a joke while sitting alongside Nolan and fellow cast members, drawing laughter from everyone involved rather than being presented as a serious account of the casting process.

Christopher Nolan quickly played along with the joke, continuing the light hearted exchange as the cast discussed the making of the epic adaptation of Homer's classic poem. The playful conversation has since spread widely across social media, with fans praising the chemistry between Damon and the filmmaker during the promotional tour.

Damon leads the film as Odysseus, the legendary King of Ithaca whose decade long journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the greatest stories in ancient literature. The production reunites Damon with Nolan following their previous collaborations on Interstellar and Oppenheimer.

The cast also includes Tom Holland as Telemachus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Calypso, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Lupita Nyong'o, Jon Bernthal, Samantha Morton, Benny Safdie, Elliot Page, Himesh Patel and several other high profile actors.

Although Damon joked about how he secured the lead role, he has been consistently serious when discussing the demands of making the film. In multiple interviews he has described The Odyssey as the hardest production of his career, explaining that Christopher Nolan warned him from the very beginning that the project would be exceptionally challenging.

According to Damon, the cast worked in harsh real world locations rather than relying heavily on studio environments, with everyone facing the same physically demanding conditions. He has also praised Nolan's commitment to practical filmmaking, saying the director pushed the entire crew to create an authentic cinematic experience that would justify the scale of Homer's timeless story.

The playful exchange about the film's casting has become one of the standout moments of the promotional campaign, with fans sharing clips across social media and joking about the imaginary list of actors who supposedly turned down the opportunity. Most viewers recognised the comment as Damon poking fun at the industry's fascination with casting rumours rather than revealing an actual sequence of rejected offers.

The Odyssey is scheduled to arrive in cinemas on July 17, with expectations running high for what is one of Christopher Nolan's most ambitious productions to date. The combination of a celebrated director, an ensemble cast and one of literature's most enduring adventures has made the film one of the year's most anticipated releases.