Why Lupita Nyong’o As Helen Of Troy Does Not Work

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from The Michael Knowles Show. 

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Christopher Nolan is doing a movie about “The Odyssey,” Homer’s epic poem, and he has cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy — the face that launched a thousand ships, the most beautiful woman in the Greek world.

Lupita Nyong’o is a very good actress. However, let’s just say she doesn’t look Greek.

She doesn’t have any of the features that are traditionally associated with Helen of Troy. Helen is portrayed as having very, very fair skin, sometimes slightly darker hair, sometimes blond hair. So it doesn’t quite match. Some people are making all sorts of nasty comments about Lupita Nyong’o, this perfectly nice-looking lady, who is certainly a very good actress.

This does not seem to serve the story, does it?

The purpose of casting is the same as acting, directing, editing, and producing — it’s to tell a story.

To cast Lupita Nyong’o in that role is to distract from the story. It undermines the story. She’s not fit for that part.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is probably the greatest actor of my lifetime. He’s just absolutely magnificent. It would be a little odd to cast Philip Seymour Hoffman as Malcolm X in “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” wouldn’t it? He’s a very good actor. But there are limits.

There are limits to what an actor can do. There are limits to this entire world.

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There was a famous debate within the theater, by the way, on so-called “colorblind casting,” which is never really colorblind. They call it colorblind casting when they cast Lupita as Helen of Troy, but they don’t call it colorblind casting if they were to cast Philip Seymour Hoffman as Malcolm X. That would be an outrage. It would never happen.

So it’s not exactly colorblind. It’s just casting black and Latino people in white roles, and not casting white people at all.

There was a famous debate on this between Robert Brustein, who ran the American Repertory Theater, and August Wilson, who was probably the most famous black American playwright, perhaps ever. He wrote “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” he wrote “Fences,” which was a movie with Denzel Washington some years ago — a good playwright as far as contemporary playwrights go.

And Brustein, the white liberal, argued for colorblind casting. Oh yeah, anybody of any race, any background can play any part. And August Wilson, the black guy — or half-black guy — said, no, they can’t. He didn’t want white people to play roles where they’re a garbage collector in the early 20th century in black neighborhoods with black families. It doesn’t read. It takes you out of the story. It isn’t true.

And there’s obviously some wiggle room here in certain roles because actors pretend. But it is beyond the capacity of certain actors — of all actors — to overcome their natural limits.

Christopher Nolan’s a good director, but one can object to the casting without being offensive and mean-spirited; it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Someone on X/Twitter rightly put it, “this is now the face that launched a thousand quips because people think it’s kind of funny.”