Lupita N’yong’o Responds To Racist Backlash Over ‘Odyssey’ Casting

First off, she told Elle magazine in an interview published Thursday, “I was so deeply honored to be entrusted with the role. I mean, she is iconic. What more can I say?”

Musk has been bemoaning N’yongo’s casting for months. The manchild mogul, as well as conservative pundit Matt Walsh, recently griped that it’s unfair that N’yongo, who is of Kenyan and Mexican descent, was cast as the most beautiful woman in ancient Greece — because, they argued, actor Sydney Sweeney would never be cast as “the most beautiful woman in Africa.”

N’yong’o didn’t comment directly on Musk’s reaction to her casting, but her response centered on a simple fact about the source material.

“This is a mythological story,” she reminded her interviewer for Elle. “Our cast is representative of the world. I’m not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.”

Nolan, meanwhile, told Elle he was “absolutely desperate” to have N’yong’o as his Helen.

“The strength and the poise were so important to the character of Helen,” the director said. “And Lupita makes it look effortless. I’m sure there’s a tremendous amount of discipline and training that goes into projecting that kind of poise and feeling the emotion bubbling beneath the character, the layers of the character right there underneath.”