The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Christopher Nolan: The Interview

Episode Date: July 19, 2026

Oscar-winning director, writer, and producer Christopher Nolan sits down with Jon Stewart to discuss his new film, "The Odyssey." They talk about "Oppenheimer" paving the way for "The Odyssey" to be made, Nolan's process of constructing movies through diagrams and structures, his embrace of the fantastical while showing respect to the film's source material, and finishing ahead of schedule despite filming with an IMAX camera in three-minute increments. -- CarShield is offering our listeners 20% off with the code TDS at https://CarShield.com/TDS -- The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central. Stream full episodes on Paramount+ Follow TDS: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. You're listening to Comedy Central. The Odyssey. Please welcome Christopher Nolan. Let me begin by. saying this. Holy shit. I saw this on Sunday. Thank you very much. Your people set up a lovely screening. It's a staggering work. Just remarkable. To the point where, you know, I feel like I know a lot of the tricks. I don't know how you did it. I honestly don't. That's all practical, right? Those are real boats. That's real water. This is not...

Yeah. Real boats, real water. It's the old. I wanted to take the audience on this incredible journey. And for me, I mean, we use every trick in the book, certainly, but the basis of it is to get the actors, get Matt Damon, Tom Holland, and Hathaway, everybody, Rob Pattinson, get them out there in the world, find locations, real locations, get a real boat, you know, get out there. Get a real cyclops.

Get a real cyclops. Get a real cyclops. As close as we could, yep, yep. Yep, exactly. What made you decide to take on this epic work? Well, coming out of my last film, Oppenheimer, had way more success than I think we had any right to expect. And that gives you an opportunity to get something made

that you might not otherwise be able to get made. You would have had trouble. Christopher Nolan, after everything, after interstellar, after inception, after memento, after Batman. you would have had trouble selling that had it not been for Oppenheimer? I think it helped that it was very successful. You think the Oscar thing helped?

I think the Oscar thing helped. I think it all helped to go to the studio and say, because being The Odyssey, it needs a massive budget, it needs a massive cast, it needs a lot. So you're asking a lot of the studio. You're asking a lot of the cast and everybody. You know, I like to say it was a very hard movie, but hard for all the right reasons.

You know, it's the oldest, it should be home. It shows up on screen. I mean, all of it shows up on screen. Thank you. Someone was telling me that you actually completed it ahead of schedule, as you have with all of your movies and under budget. Yes. Never happened.

It was... Never happened. I mean, it's just... Well, I mean, the reality is, you know, we went out 100 days, and by day 91, we couldn't have taken another. step. So we finished the right time. You were done. We were done. Everybody was done. I mean, people were just exhausted. Right. They've been through it. So, you know, it took the right time to make the film. We had enough time to make it. We had the resources to make it. There is, now,

I am obviously, I don't want to say an expert in mythology and Greek literature. Some would say. But some of our writers are experts. And so when we walked out, I walked out with someone who's actually studied those texts in Greek, and I was looking at him like, because for me, I was utterly absorbed and transformed by the powerful storytelling and the epic nature of it and all those things. But this is a person that, to be frank, would probably be a bit of a pain in the ass to watch The Odyssey with. Loved it.

Oh, great. Great. One note. Okay. It's a little late. Are you ready? Okay. Apparently, there is a joke.

that Odysseus makes with Cyclops. Yes. Yes. He was very upset that that was not in the movie. I understand. It's a pun. Pons in translation are tough. Do you do a lot of puns in your monologues every night? We do sometimes, but only because we write the show at a fifth grade level.

It's a slightly different. There you go. I tried. It was not possible to work it in. When you do something like this, that so many people feel a sense of ownership over. Yeah, yeah. Or did the experience with things like Batman

already kind of inure you to that experience? Not inure. It taught you what's at the base of it. You know, when you take on the character of Batman, as we did in the Dark Night trilogy, you were dealing with, at that time, 75 years of history with a beloved character who'd been worked on by these incredible writers and artists.

And what we learned in that experience is, if we made the best film we possibly could, if we put as strong an interpretation on the characters as we could, the fans felt the respect on the love for the source material, even if we weren't doing exactly what they would have done. That was what was important, was to respect the material. And I think the same applies very much to Homer. That is a very interesting tape,

because I would imagine it's easy to approach it with almost a sense of defensiveness, which I've seen in those kinds of films, where they say, well, these people, it's a toxic fandom, and they won't. But that's a very different mindset, which is, I want to make sure that I've honored this material in the right way, and that should resonate with them. Yeah. I mean, that's what we found at every stage with those movies. People have very strong feelings about the characters. They're interested, and that's a huge advantage for a

filmmaker. I mean, the fact that people have been fascinated by The Odyssey for 3,000 years, the fact that people, you know, care about the film coming out, you know, that's a huge advantage. It means we've got people's attention, and now we have to show them. something that feels worthwhile. It feels like it does justice to this incredible story. Right. And it does have that epic nature. This is going to feel far afield. It felt like, in some respects, the Odyssey was a sequel to Oppenheimer. And I know that sounds incredibly, incredibly dumb. So let me explain why I think that. I'm incredibly dumb. When I think about Oppenheimer, what so stayed with me in that movie was the weight that Oppenheimer must have felt when he saw the reality of what he had created.

And The Odyssey feels like a journey of a man reckoning with what he had done in war and what war does to men. And they felt very connected to me, both films. I was about to stop you because we don't want any spoilers. Oh. 3,000-year-old spoilers. But no, I am very much, I feel like you certainly watch the film the way I intended. And I think by the end that connection is made. You know, the interpretation of the Odyssey, what it could mean,

the idea of these extraordinary events of the Trojan War, the force, all of this. Yeah, we wanted to try and wrestle with it, you know, in a modern sense. try and say, okay, what if these things were real? What if we were there? What would it be like? What would the resonance be? What would the gravity of the situation be? And in micro, it's things like being on a real ship and a real storm or going into the cave

of the Cyclops. What would that really be like? And the answer is intense. And as far as the effect of everything that Odysseus has been through and what part he's played in this mythic conflict. of the Trojan War. Yeah, it felt like the thing to do was really try and take that on

with a certain amount of weight, a certain amount of gravity. But for me, every film I do, if I've done my job right, I leave it with questions and sort of interesting things that I want to keep drilling down on. And coming out of Oppenheimer,

yeah, I definitely brought Oppenheimer into this movie with me, yeah, certainly. And it's also because the movies are all so well-constructed. I feel like you would have been a great architect as well, if you want it to be. Like there's such wonderful symmetry

and puzzles to unfold in there. Do you approach it as a constructor? I do. I mean, before I write, I do a lot of sort of diagramming out. I draw a lot of pictures, not storyboards, but actually diagrams of the narrative and how the structure might work.

And coming to this poem, I mean, Homer's original, is one of the great non-linear structures. Which for me, you know, that's the kind of structure I enjoy in cinematic storytelling. So I really try to be faithful to that. But yeah, I do a lot of sort of visual diagramming, a lot of trying to think in, trying to find ways to think of the narrative in three-dimensional terms. Then I sit down and write when I've done months and months of that.

And it does, you know, you said something interesting when you said, you know, it's this non-linear story. And it has so many narrators and you don't know who's reliable and who is, not reliable. Is that something you have to decide as you go in? Do you think to yourself? He'll tell him, August, he's reliable, or Penelope is, or even Odysseus, are there moments where you think, did this even happen to him? Is this just his mind trying to erase

the pain of what he went through in Troy? Are we going deep now? Go deep, baby. Yeah, I know. I know. Here's the thing. I will never get a chance to get high with you in a door. So this is it, baby. This is all we got. Because it really, I'm telling you, this is a poignant work. It really speaks to the moment we're in and everything.

No, I mean, I actually, I love the nature of the question. I'm just trying to think of how to answer it for people who haven't seen the movie. And I don't want to... Well, I never like to define the experience for the audience. So for me, there are ambiguities. There are questions. There are layers in which things can work. But the answer to the first part of your question, and this is all...

always been the case for me with my work is I have to know the answer. I have to know what I believe the answer to be. Okay. And then otherwise the ambiguities won't be productive. Right. There'll be a sort of non-answer as opposed to if you look at the ending of inception, for example, the spinning top and that you know, people often will ask me, you know. Was it? Well, exactly. And when you approach it though, in your mind, you know the answer. Yes. But that's not something that you put out there because that changes the experience Exactly. For the viewer.

First time I overtook a film, you know, really out there and did a bunch of interviews on it, was Memento. Right. And that's a film I wrote based on a short story that my brother had written. And he came with me, came with us to the Venice Film Festival, which where we premiered it. And right afterwards, I was asked a bunch of questions.

And they asked me about the ambiguity at the end. And I said, well, it's meant to be up to you. But I think it's this, this, this. And he took me aside, and he's like, nobody heard the first part where they said it's meant to be up to you. All they hear is what you say. You're interpretation Trump's everything. You can never do that again. And he was right. And I never have since that. Because... Okay, I'm just going to cross out my McConaughey in the library, interstellar question.

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Once I borrow in on a project, nothing else exists. I mean family just about. You know, for instance. It's like, you know, one of the responsibilities, but one of the great thrills of my job is you get to sort of live in a world for a couple of years. And I devote myself to that fully. And for me, that's never finished, really, until the film goes out to the audience. The audience finishes the movie. They tell us what it is that we did.

And so we're right now, you know, a few days away, and it's a terrifying time. Is that so, do you feel a little bit of the jitters from that? Or do you think you've got a pretty good idea of where you think it'll land for people? Have you seen it enough with people? I've seen it enough with people. We screen it as we go to guinea pigs, you know. Sure. By the way, also in the movie.

Odysseus fights guinea pig. He's changed some things around. Yeah, so you, you know, you have an eye. idea how the movie's playing for an audience, but the truth is there's nothing like going out into the world for thousands and thousands of screens all over the world, you know, over one weekend. I mean, that's a very different thing. And it never gets any easier and it's absolutely terrifying. Can I ask you one particular sequence, the Trojan horse sequence, which is something that, I think for all of us that have a familiarity with, you know, the Iliad and the Odyssey and sort of

our introduction to myth and Edith Hamilton and, you know, how that all, you know, how that all, spins off. The Trojan horse had always existed as a certain methodology for how it gets in Detroit. You take a very different approach that I thought landed thematically the poignancy of it much better. So I guess what I'm saying is Homer ain't got shit on you. What was the process just going into that particular scene? Because just the mechanics of it seems to so difficult, but also it just, it felt like such a brilliant summation thematically of the weight that Odysseus felt like he was carrying. Yeah, I mean, a lot of that thinking for me comes about as a result of looking at it saying,

okay, how can we have this work and be credible for a modern audience? Right. We all know when we see a Trojan horse that it's stuffed with Greeks, you know, so you're starting from a difficult position. It's like, how do you sell that concept? It's a piñata that fights back. It's a pinata that fights back. Sure. And I had actually, 20 years ago, I was briefly attached to direct Troy, the film that David Benioff had written based on the Iliad. Yes, I read that. That was the Brad Pitt. It was... Yeah. So I had to figure out, because the horse was in that script, even though it's not in the Iliad, they put it in the film. And so I had to sort of figure out, well, what's my approach to it? And I came up with this idea of the horse. half buried in the sand, about to be destroyed or carried away by the waves.

So as the Trojans find it, the last thing, it looks like, you know, there's no wheels. It doesn't look like something that's meant to be carried into the city. And that image stuck with me for, you know, decades. I really wanted to do that and flesh out the whole sequence. Because to me, that was the excitement. It's like, can we present this to an audience in a way that they can believe in? And that was the sort of mantra for everybody on the film with every sequence. Right.

people want to go on this journey with us. Let's give them a reason to believe. It's grounded in a practical realism that I think is what helps it create that epignac. Because I'm raised in the Clash of the Titans generation. You know, it was sort of like Harry Hamlin with the band and then like the silo comes into the wall. You know, it was all like claymation and camp.

And that's how I've never seen that type of movie portrayed with a sort of, like you say, grounded realism, even though they're gods. Well, and this is the thing is, you know, when we looked at it, Greek mythology hadn't really been told in modern cinema in that way. The work of Ray Harryhaus, when you're talking about Clash for the Titans and things and that, very, very brilliant, handmade, amazing approach. But always on a B-movie budget, never with the ability to kind of put it out there big, you know, with an incredible cast and, you know, on that sort of scale.

And I think it was those technical limitations. Like in the great era of, you know, Swarden Sandals movies of the 50s and 60s, they don't have the techniques to be able to embrace the fantastical. And what is the Odyssey without the fantastical? You know, you want to see the Cyclops. You want to see Cylirond, and Carreptus and the Sirens and Circe and all of the HACs. Boy, those scenes are just spectacular. That's Samantha Morton.

Incredible. I wanted to work with for a long time. And you even had to, you know, when you were talking about the technology of it, you had to sort of create machinery that didn't exist because IMAX is notoriously loud. Yes, cameras are... I mean, it's like a generator. Yes.

It's a crazy thing to have to act in front of. So in the past, we'd always used it for the action scenes. I saw IMAX first... I was about 16 years old at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. And I wanted... Right then, I was like, if I could ever... At 16. Yeah, yeah.

I wanted to make a film entirely in IMAX. On The Dark Night, I had the opportunity to meet with IMAX and say, can we use your cameras and do the action scenes that way? So the introduction of Heath Ledger's Joker, truck flip, all that stuff. All that's IMAX. But because the cameras are so loud, we couldn't do performances.

We couldn't capture the dialogue. And so finally with this film, I'd call them up, and I said, look, if ever there were a film to do the entire film in IMAX, this is the one, so can we find a way to silence the cameras? And they built this blimping system, this kind of high-tech box. You put the camera in, and then you can...

So you're filming done, but that IMAX has got to run out. How long... What's the cartridge on an island? A little under three minutes. So every three minutes... Yeah. Every three minutes you're saying to the actors, just stay in that mode.

Stay in the water. Incredibly dramatic scene. And you came in nine days faster and under budget, even with that. Well, I think actually sometimes the limitations to give everybody a real focus. And so I went to the actors earlier on and I said,

in the middle of your most intense scene, is it okay if we just stop the camera reload it, keep everybody quiet. Here's what I'm going to say. You're a wizard, Harry. And the film is spectacular. And as always, you are

my favorite filmmaker. And I just so appreciate the intentionality that you put into it and the craft of it and the beauty of it and it's just spectacular. And I do hope everybody rushes out to see it in the way that it was intended because it's really a remarkable piece

work. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Christopher Nolan. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and

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