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Tom Holland shares what Zendaya told him when he received an offer to star in The Odyssey, which was scheduled to shoot at the same time as Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Both Holland and Zendaya both star in Christopher Nolan’s new action epic
The Odyssey is in theaters July 17
Tom Holland has an amusing story regarding how Zendaya encouraged him to take a leading role in The Odyssey.
When Holland sat down with Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and writer-director Christopher Nolan to discuss the filmmaker’s latest epic with PEOPLE for this week’s issue, the 30-year-old actor quipped he did “a lot of thinking” when Nolan, 55, first asked him to costar in the movie as Telemachus, son of Damon’s Odysseus and Hathaway’s Penelope.
“To be honest, when I got home after our meeting, I sat down with Z and was like, ‘I’ve been offered this movie,’” Holland says, referencing Zendaya, the actress whom he has been in a relationship with since 2021 and married earlier this year. “And she was like, ‘By who?’ And I was like, ‘It’s the big one.’ And she was like, ‘Chris?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s Chris Nolan.’”
“And then we had Spider-Man that was literally scheduled to go the same day that we would start shooting,” he adds. “Z said, ‘I’ll leave you if you don’t do The Odyssey.‘” Cue laughter from Damon, Hathaway and Nolan.
“Yes. Well, thank you to her,” Nolan responds, chuckling. “Here I am,” Holland adds.
Holland signing on to The Odyssey required him to ask Sony Pictures executive Tom Rothman — Sony produces the Spider-Man movies — to push back production on Spidey’s next entry, Brand New Day, in order for him to make the movie, as Holland recounted to GQ in a June feature.
Holland got the green light and now he and Zendaya, who plays Athena in The Odyssey and costars in the Spider-Man movies as Peter Parker’s love interest Michelle “M.J.” Jones, are having a double blockbuster summer (the new Spider-Man movie hits theaters July 31).
Damon and Hathaway had each worked with Nolan twice before, but Holland joined the production as a newcomer to the Oppenheimer filmmaker’s style. “Tom was somebody I hadn’t worked with before, but I’ve admired his work for years and really wanted to work with him and so we met and I convinced him to do it,” Nolan recalls of their conversations prior to joining the movie.
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Matt Damon, Christopher Nolan, Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland on July 1, 2026Credit: Gavin Bond
Nolan adds: “It wasn’t easy jamming in between a lot of different things. He’s a very busy young man, but this family came together and obviously Anne, this is the third time we’ve worked together and I’m just thrilled that these guys all agreed to come on board.”
“I like to say it was a hard shoot, but hard in the right way,” Nolan adds. Put to the test, “they rose to it magnificently.”
Zendaya’s ancient Greek goddess of wisdom appears alongside Damon’s Odysseus throughout the movie, and Holland shared in a recent interview with Access Hollywoodthat Nolan gave him the opportunity to tell Zendaya first that the Oscar-winning director wanted her for the role. “I said, ‘Just read [the script] again, but read Athena really closely.’ And the little corners of her mouth . . . It was amazing,” Holland recalled.
The Odyssey is in theaters July 17.
For more on The Odyssey, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, available everywhere Friday.
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