Robert Pattinson Says Gruelling The Odyssey Shoot Left Actors 'Broken'

The stars of The Odyssey have admitted that filming the much-hyped Christopher Nolan epic was every bit as gruelling as you might expect.

Matt Damon and Robert Pattinson are two of the A-listers in the star-studded cast of the new movie, based on the ancient Greek poem by Homer which tells the story of Odysseus’ mammoth 10-year journey home after the Trojan War.

While Nolan already has a reputation for preferring practical effects over CGI and filming on location over green screen, with The Odyssey taking the cast and crew to seven different countries to help them create the film’s ambitious battle shots, stunts and mammoth travel sequences.

“The joke on the crew was we didn’t have a single easy location,” Matt told GQ as part of a new interview.

“Every time we’d go somewhere, we’d be like, ‘Well, Iceland will be easier’. And then it’s raining sideways and it’s fucking freezing. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, easy? Hey, hold my beer.’ ” 

The shoot concluded on a lot in Los Angeles, with Matt recalling: “Sure enough, we showed up [to the set] and Chris has two jet engines blowing so much water at us.

“So it was kind of a fitting end. Even the controlled environment was cold, wet, and a little bit miserable.”

As for Robert, he wasn’t required on set until the shoot was already well underway.

“I’ve never seen people look so exhausted,” the former Twilight star admitted to the magazine of his first days on set. “And this was only a third of the way.”

He continued: “I started a third of the way through the movie, and they’d already been to [two] countries by that point and people just looked like… I mean, at the end of every day people were broken.”

On Wednesday, The Odyssey released a new behind-the-scenes featurette, in which Matt spoke about how the film is “the biggest” he’s ever been involved in, in terms of its scale and “ambition”.

He and Robert are joined in the cast by Oscar winners Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron, as well as newcomers to the Nolan-verse, Zendaya and Tom Holland.

The Odyssey hits cinemas on Friday 17 July. Read Matt Damon and Robert Pattinson’s interview in GQ here.