Christopher Nolan has revealed new details about how he brought one of The Odyssey’s most iconic monsters to life: the Cyclops Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant who traps Odysseus and his men in a cave.
Speaking to Empire as part of its August 2026 cover feature, Nolan explained that the Cyclops sequence was built around a single guiding question and brought to life with a mix of practical techniques, including a towering 60-foot contraption on set.
For more from the Empire feature, see our coverage of the Laestrygonian battle and the three collectible covers. For everything else announced so far, see our full Odyssey movie guide.
“What Would This Be Like in Real Life?”
For Nolan, the challenge of adapting The Odyssey was taking one of the most fantastical stories ever told and grounding it in reality. He brought the same instinct to the Cyclops that he brought to Gotham in the Dark Knight trilogy and to space travel in Interstellar.
“Everything about the Cyclops sequence is aimed at trying to imagine: what would this be like in real life?” Nolan told Empire. “Not approaching it from a storybook or cartoony point of view, but really trying to be in there with Odysseus and his men. It’s a horrifying situation.”
To achieve that, Nolan used a combination of animatronics, puppetry, and a 60-foot contraption that gave the giant a sense of gargantuan scale on set, rather than relying on adding the creature entirely in post-production.
Bill Irwin Performed the Cyclops on Set
The Cyclops, Polyphemus, is performed by Bill Irwin, who previously voiced the robot TARS in Nolan’s Interstellar. Rather than have the actors perform against nothing, Irwin was present throughout the shoot, giving the monster a real presence in the cave.
“Bill was doing voices and noises and was with us that entire time,” Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus, told Empire.
The approach reflects Nolan’s long-standing preference for practical, in-camera filmmaking, giving his actors something tangible to react to on set.
A Real Cave, Thousands of Bees, and 40 Sheep
True to his commitment to realism, Nolan shot the sequence inside an actual cave: Nestor’s Cave in Messenia, Greece. The location brought its own set of very real challenges.
“At the cave mouth, there was a buzzing,” Damon recounted. “And you can hear it in the movie, because there were thousands of bees right at the mouth of the cave. You had to walk through this curtain of bees to get in.”
Inside the cave, the conditions got worse. The scene featured 40 live sheep, a nod to the myth, in which Odysseus and his men ultimately escape Polyphemus by clinging to the underbellies of the giant’s flock. The animals left their mark on the shooting environment.
“It got pungent,” Nolan said. “Yeah, it got very, very dank and smelly after a time. But I’ve built a lot of caves before. Shooting in a real cave, the feeling is utterly different. Once the rock is moved across the door and you’re in the dark, it’s very, very oppressive. It gave it a sense of reality.”
The Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey
The encounter with Polyphemus is one of the most famous episodes in Homer’s epic. After becoming trapped in the Cyclops’s cave, Odysseus watches the giant devour several of his men before devising an escape.
He gets Polyphemus drunk, tells the giant his name is “Nobody,” and then blinds him with a sharpened stake while he sleeps. When the wounded Cyclops cries out that “Nobody” is attacking him, his fellow giants ignore his pleas. Odysseus and his surviving men then escape by clinging to the bellies of Polyphemus’s sheep as they are let out to graze.
The episode comes at a price. Polyphemus is a son of Poseidon, and his blinding earns Odysseus the wrath of the sea god, which is part of what keeps the hero from reaching home for ten years.
About The Odyssey
The Odyssey is written and directed by Christopher Nolan and is based on Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem. The film was shot using brand new IMAX film technology across locations in Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Iceland, Western Sahara, and Malta.
The film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Zendaya as Athena, Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Charlize Theron as Calypso, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, Samantha Morton as Circe, and Bill Irwin as the Cyclops Polyphemus, among over 30 confirmed actors.
The Odyssey opens in theaters and IMAX everywhere on July 17, 2026, from Universal Pictures.
