Matt Damon had a funny story to tell during his stop on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and it involves a moment he completely misread on the set of Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey.
Damon, who plays Odysseus in the sweeping IMAX epic, told Fallon about a scene in which his character is separated from his son Telemachus, played by Tom Holland, with Damon’s character on a boat and Holland’s on the shore. During the shoot, Damon noticed Holland placing a hand over his heart and assumed it was an emotional, in-the-moment acting choice, so he began mirroring the gesture himself.
It wasn’t until later that day that Damon learned the truth. When he asked Holland whether Nolan had directed him to make the gesture, Holland set him straight: “My costume was choking me.” Damon, who admitted he’s nearsighted, said he’d mistaken Holland tugging at his collar for a poignant salute between father and son. The moment, he confirmed, did not make it into the final film.
The story followed a glowing review of Damon’s work from Holland himself, who appeared on the show the night before and told Fallon that Damon handled brutal shoot conditions, including rain and on-set flames, without a single complaint.
Damon also gave Fallon a glimpse into the scale of the production, which he called the most demanding of his career. The film was shot over roughly six months across six countries, entirely on IMAX cameras, with Nolan opting for practical effects over CGI. Damon noted that when the movie calls for boats or a crowd of a thousand people fighting, those were real boats and real extras, not digital additions.
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One of the more elaborate practical sequences Damon described involved stunt performers buried in black sand and breathing through snorkels to portray rising spirits, a shot achieved with safety monitors and timers to track how long each performer had been underground.
The Odyssey, also starring Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron and Lupita Nyong’o, marks Damon’s third collaboration with Nolan after Interstellarand Oppenheimer. The film opens in theaters July 17.
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