Himesh Patel on ‘The Odyssey,’ Christopher Nolan, and the new ‘X-Files’

This article was featured in MH Flex, our monthly newsletter recommending the one in-depth interview you need to flex your pop culture knowledge. Sign up here to get it first.

WHEN I FIRST interview Himesh Patel, neither of us has seen The Odyssey yet. In fact, there’s only one thing he can specifically, definitively say: “I hope I’m in it!” He’s affable and laid-back, wearing a T-shirt and denim jacket as we chat about the horror hits Obsession and Backrooms, and he marvels at the idea of what the success of those small-budget films could mean for the industry’s future. (And having starred in The Franchise, the great but short-lived HBO comedy skewering the behind-the-scenes creation of a superhero franchise, he has some thoughts.) Patel has worked with Odyssey director Christopher Nolan once before, in the mind-bending Tenet, and we talk about the unique experience of acting in a Chris Nolan joint.

But when we meet again after both finally seeing the much-anticipated The Odyssey, things get real. Patel isn’t just in the movie, but his character of Eurylochus, the second-in-command soldier to Matt Damon’s Odysseus, shines in a stacked ensemble. Now we’re able to talk about the grueling experience of going to the end of the world and back, through the likes of epic battles on land and sea, dark magic, and life-threatening whirlpools.

“It was even beyond my wildest imaginings while we were making it, really,” he says on the afternoon after we had both seen the finished film for the very first time. “There are sequences that were more magnificent, more terrifying, and more visceral than I could ever have imagined while we were shooting them.”

Nolan’s films have been cultural events for a long time. Oppenheimer swept the Oscars and nearly grossed $1 billion; his Dark Knight trilogy set a high watermark for the superhero movie; Interstellar and Inception quickly became sci-fi classics of massive scale and size. Just the idea of a filmmaker like that taking on a story like The Odyssey should be enticing to anyone.

Patel’s second go-around with Nolan came at just the right time; he’d been waiting for the news on whether or not The Franchise would be returning for a second season. “Rumors were flying around,” he says. “And then I got a call from my agent’s office saying, ‘Hey, can we call you for five minutes?’ And I thought, Well, I know what this is…. But I didn’t know what it was. Because then they said, ‘Chris Nolan is offering you a role.’ I was standing in the middle of the street at the time, and I genuinely said, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ ”

While The Franchise was ultimately not renewed (“I think we deserved another bite of the apple, but I’m really proud of what we made,” Patel says), the 35-year-old actor went straight into three more projects: an appearance alongside Riz Ahmed in Prime Video’s Bait, playing Dr. Watson in Netflix’s Enola Holmes 3, and the massive undertaking that was The Odyssey. Since then, he’s landed the co-lead (opposite Danielle Deadwyler) in Ryan Coogler’s new version of The X-Files series. He’s filmed the pilot, and he’s waiting for word on whether they’ll get to do more.

In short, it’s a good time to be Himesh Patel. Over the course of two conversations, he told Men’s Health about the challenges and triumphs of filming The Odyssey (spoilers ahead for one of humanity’s oldest surviving works of literature), the advice Matt Damon gave along the way, and what the new X-Files is all about.

MEN’S HEALTH: When you have experiences like starting on an exciting new project like The Odyssey, or disappointments like The Franchise not getting renewed, is there anyone you’ve met along the way who you like to contact for advice?

HIMESH PATEL: I called up Ruth Negga recently, who I worked with on Good Grief. She’s a wonderful human being and she’s run the gamut of things. She really knows how to handle a lot of this industry in many ways. I also got to know Steven Yeun recently. I called him up toward the end of last year, when I was thinking about next steps with these two movies [Enola Holmes 3 and The Odyssey] coming out. I’ve been really lucky to meet some wonderful people who understand the Hollywood world. It’s a very different thing, and it’s not always easy.

MH: What’s the hardest part?

HP: Taking ownership of things. I often think about how lucky I am to be here—there are a million things that have to fall into place for anyone to get anywhere, but at some point you do have to take ownership of your career. Can you steer the ship a little bit? Can you guide your team and take a bit more leadership over things? You have to know how to navigate all that, and it’s not always easy, especially when you just really enjoy doing the job. I don’t want it to ever become stressful.

MH: Were you surprised when Christopher Nolan offered you the role in The Odyssey?

HP: It’s not what I was expecting when I got the call. They’re offering me a role? I thought, I auditioned for Tenet. I wasn’t expecting to be in a bracket of actors that he would just offer a role—and it’s a great role! I got to do some really special stuff. And it all came out of nowhere.

Christopher Nolan directs Matt Damon and Himesh Patel in The Odyssey.

MH: Did working on Tenet help prepare you for The Odyssey?

HP: To some extent, yeah. I was used to how the set runs and what’s expected of you. It was nice to walk into a slightly familiar environment. With Chris, a lot of the team is the same people: [cinematographer] Hoyte van Hoytema, some of the camera team, a lot of the sound guys. I’d worked with the stunt team on Tenet. So it was a bit of a familiar environment. If it had all been new faces, that would have been scary.

MH: What kind of prep did you put in? You’re playing a warrior, after all.

HP: I didn’t have a whole lot of time, so I did my best. I worked with my trainer back in London, and then I tried to keep it up during the shoot, but the hours were pretty demanding, to say the least. It was hard to muster up the energy to get any workout in. For example, when we were shooting in Scotland, we would get picked up from the hotel at like 4 a.m., shooting all day, and hitting the hay at 8 p.m.

MH: Goodness.

HP: It’s because he wants you on set at 7 a.m. I think a lot of that had to do with the light. He likes to do as much in-camera as possible. And he likes to shoot fast. It’s a run-and-gun style at times, which I really love. Despite shooting with an IMAX camera, and the scale of it all, he’s still just finding stuff. There’s something alive to his filmmaking—we’re using natural light, the sun’s coming up over the hill, are we ready to shoot or not? That’s how you get some really beautiful stuff.

MH: Your character, Eurylochus, is Odysseus’s second-in-command. What was it like working with Matt Damon?

HP: To have spent that much time around him was such a privilege. He’s kind to everyone, and his work ethic as number one on the call sheet was just impeccable. I’ve never seen anyone work as physically hard in a role, and there was not a word of complaint and not an eye rolled at any point.

He was just always ready to go. Every now and then I’d see him sitting on a rock, just taking a second for himself. That set the bar. You could start complaining about something, but if he’s not complaining, then I don’t know what you’re complaining about. He’s in it as much as we are. It’s a very democratic set, a Chris Nolan set. No one’s getting any special treatment.

MH: Was there a particular moment where you remember Matt taking on a leadership role on set?

HP: There was a day where we were shooting off this island in Italy called Favignana. And we’d shot during the day, and it’d been really sunny, and then we went back to port to get lunch, and these dark clouds rolled in. We all thought they might call it for the day. But instead, we went straight back onto the boat for a specific shot Chris wanted to get with the dark clouds and some rain. The SFX team had a really hilarious job where they just pulled up beside us in a boat with a hose and wind machines.

So all the rain was flying at us sideways, we’re all scrabbling over this boat, trying to get to oars, trying to row away from whatever we were running away from in the scene. We’re dripping wet, feeling very sorry for ourselves, and Matt just turned to us all and said, “There are thousands of actors in SAG, and every single one of them would kill to be where you are.” It’s a privilege working at that scale, but what’s expected of you is to work hard.

MH: There’s a lot of lore about Christopher Nolan’s sets—no phones, no chairs, all of that. Is it really like people say?

HP: Yeah—no phones, because we’re there to work, and everyone’s got to be paying attention. I don’t think Chris does shot lists or storyboards. He’s got the whole thing in his head, so everyone just has to be ready. Everything’s built 360, as it were, so he can put the camera wherever he wants, whenever he wants it. On most sets, you would have time while they re-light or whatever to go back to your trailer or the cast tent. There’s none of that. You get maybe a few minutes here and there to take a breather while they shift stuff around. If there’s a rock, you can sit on that. No one has any chairs. Chris doesn’t have a chair. Everyone’s equal and he’s there with you.

MH: Was there a day you remember as particularly challenging?

HP: There was a day and night we were shooting in Iceland. It was around that time of year in Iceland where the sun doesn’t set, but we were still shooting nights because there’s this twilight that happens between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. We were shooting in the rain, in the cold, in this eerie twilight. A [production] runner comes up and hands us a meal, a tray with some food on it. So I’m just standing there with Matt in this sideways rain, eating curry and rice or something from a tray, and at some point I turned to Matt and asked, “Matt, are these the worst conditions you’ve ever filmed in?” And he said, “I don’t know, but if it’s not the worst, then whatever the worst was, you were there with me for it too.” That’s the reality Chris wants to capture. That’s why his movies feel so visceral and so alive, because he doesn’t manufacture any of it. He doesn’t want it to feel too cushy. He wants us to feel that danger.

MH: Hearing that from the guy who played Jason Bourne must make it feel legit.

HP: Honestly, if he’s saying it—“This is it, I’ve never had a bigger challenge”—that excites me. There are about 20 years separating me and Matt, and he’s still finding new levels of challenge. So I know I’ve still got a lot to experience and learn. The challenges and the excitement will keep coming.

MH: How does the film make one of our oldest surviving stories feel new?

HP: Often with this genre, people have an expectation of how it should look and feel. Maybe they expect a certain opulence or grandeur, maybe a certain type of theatricality that we’re used to with sword-and-sandal movies.

This is stripping all that back. The scale is there—of course it is, since we shot every frame of it on IMAX film—but it’s also raw and it’s alive in a way that you don’t always see with this type of epic.

Patel with Robert Pattinson and John David Washington in Tenet, also directed by Nolan.

FROM LEFT: Daniel Brühl, Patel, and Isaac Powell in The Franchise.

Patel’s first leading role was in Danny Boyle’s Yesterday.

MH: You’re in some of the biggest, most intense sequences in the movie. What was your favorite to see play out?

HP: Hard to pick. It was great to see the Cyclops sequence all put together, without wanting to spoil exactly how he did it. Bill Irwin, who played the Cyclops, was there every day. But, obviously, he’s not a giant, so there’s a bit of trickery there. But it looked even more amazing on screen. And he brought so much humanity to what I’m sure everyone is expecting to just be a monster. And, of course, the Circe sequence is pretty unbelievable.

MH: I mean, I have to ask about that sequence, where Circe turns Odysseus’s men into pigs. What was that like?

HP: I didn’t know quite what to expect, but I can tell you there’s no CGI in that sequence. I think people won’t quite believe it, but there’s none.

MH: Did you realize how dark that sequence was going to get? That was the closest I’ve ever seen Christopher Nolan come to horror.

HP: I had a sense of it, but to see it all put together and to see the pace of it, the way it ramps up, it’s so visceral and disgusting. I think you’re right, I don’t think I’ve seen Chris go to that sort of place before.

MH: I didn’t see you stuffed in the Trojan horse with the rest of the Greek soldiers.

HP: I wasn’t in there, actually. It was a last-minute logistical decision. But I dodged a bullet because I heard from all the other guys that it was gnarly in there. Once again, Chris wasn’t pretending. He was like, “I’m going to stuff you in this horse. I’m going to submerge some of you in water. And we’re going to film it. We’re not tricking anyone.” My hat’s off to all the guys who went in there. The scene looks amazing. It looks real in a way that I don’t think any Trojan Horse sequence has before. It was worth it.

MH: That sequence seems to encapsulate what you were saying about the movie feeling epic but also raw and intimate.

HP: And Chris was in the Trojan horse with them. Talk about how gnarly being an actor in the horse was—he was in there and he was filming it. He wasn’t getting out of it the way I did! [Laughs] But that’s what he enjoys about making movies. He enjoys being in there and having that intimacy with all of us rather than being at a distance and shouting from a megaphone. That’s not the kind of director he is. All the stuff about no one having phones or chairs, that’s all true, but it’s not because Chris wants to torture people. He needs everyone to be at the same level to make movies the way he makes them. We’re all going to be in it together. And if we’re in the water, he’s in the water with us. His reputation precedes him; we know he’s a great filmmaker. But on set, you really experience the fact that he’s the kind of director who’s willing to be there with you at every step.

MH: That must go such a long way.

HP: It does, man. That’s why you jump through hoops for the guy, because he’s not asking anything of you that he’s not asking of himself.

MH: Speaking of visionary directors, you recently shot a pilot for a new X-Files series created by Ryan Coogler. How did that happen?

HP: The script appeared in my inbox, as it often does, from my agents. It felt almost nonchalant the way they just dropped it into my inbox. But I can tell they were probably quite proud of themselves. They were like, “This is a good one….”

And it was a great script. Then I heard Ryan was in town for the BAFTAs and that he wanted to meet with me. So we had breakfast and I had a great time chatting with him. He’s got an amazing brain. He’s a real artist, a soulful artist. He’s got so much depth to him. It wasn’t clear what the meeting would be about at first. I assumed it would just be a chat, and that I’d audition for the part down the line. Then it became clear that he was asking me if I wanted to do it. Fast-forward and we just wrapped it a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully we get to do more, but for now it’s just a pilot.

MH: In the original series, the relationship between Mulder and Scully was central, as was the chemistry between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. How did you develop that with Danielle Deadwyler?

HP: What was great about working with Danielle was that we knew each other already. We were both in Station Eleven. Now, our characters didn’t meet in Station Eleven, so we never worked together. But we’ve stayed in touch ever since. I had seen her a couple of times when she’s been in London. We’ve just always got on really well. I hope I get to spend a lot more time with her.

MH: How would you say this new version of The X-Files is going to connect, or satisfy fans of the original series?

HP: I’m trying to think very carefully how to answer that.

MH: I don’t want to get you in any trouble.

HP: It’s not even that I don’t want to get into trouble—of course, I don’t!—but that I, as a viewer, love the not knowing. I’ve always found it interesting that a lot of fans want to find out everything that’s going to happen on a show. I say just let it unfold. It’ll appear in front of you and the thrill of that will be unimaginable.

But I’ll tell you this: Ryan loves the original show. That’s why he wanted to do this. And so it honors everything that’s come before whilst also beginning something entirely new and entirely fresh. There’s big ambition to what we want to do.

This interview has been edited and combined from two separate meetings for length and clarity.

Buy The Odyssey Tickets Here

Stream Enola Holmes 3 Here

Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.