Zendaya Had No Idea She Was Up for Her Nolan Dream Role: But Tom Holland Did
For all the spectacle Christopher Nolan packed into The Odyssey, the story fans can't stop sharing this week happened on a couch. As the film premiered in London on July 6 ahead of its July 17 theatrical release, Zendayaand Tom Holland each told their half of the same story. Namely, she never knew she was being considered for the role of Athena, and her husband was the one who spilled the secret.
Zendaya plays the goddess of wisdom in Nolan's adaptation of Homer's epic, opposite Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope and Holland as the couple's son, Telemachus. But when Holland first landed his part, she assumed the family's good fortune ended there. "I was already on Cloud Nine for him," she recalled on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
What she didn't know was what happened at her husband's meeting with the director. According to Holland, Nolan ended the conversation with a question: "Would you be offended if I asked Zendaya to play Athena?" Holland assured him he would not be, then asked if he could deliver the news himself. Nolan agreed.
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The couple had read the script together the night before that meeting. So when Holland came home and suggested she look at it again, Zendaya was confused. His advice to her was "just read it again, but read Athena really closely." Her reaction, by her own account, was disbelief, followed by the realization that she would be working with a filmmaker she had admired for years. Holland has said that Interstellar is her favorite movie, and that getting to hand her that information felt like a gift he could never properly thank Nolan for.
The Odyssey marks the couple's first movie together since confirming their marriage, and their fifth on-screen collaboration since meeting on Spider-Man: Homecoming, though they share no scenes in Nolan's sprawling ensemble. The scheduling stakes were also very high. Holland previously told GQ that Marvel shifted Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which opens July 31, so he could take the Nolan role, putting both halves of the household at the center of two of the summer's biggest releases just two weeks apart.
For a couple famous for guarding their private life, sharing this heartwarming moment with fans is quite a treat. When The Odyssey reaches theaters on July 17, audiences will see the result of a role that a Hollywood wife found out about from her Hollywood husband, at home.
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This story was originally published July 10, 2026 at 11:42 AM.