Tom Holland arrived on the set of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey as a Marvel veteran — and still somehow convinced himself he was having the worst first day in Hollywood history. The actor has revealed that he spent the early hours of his first shoot quietly panicking, certain that Nolan was dissatisfied with everything he was doing, all because the director kept calling cut.
The culprit, as it turned out, was not Holland's acting at all. It was physics. Or rather, the three-minute magazine limit of the IMAX cameras Nolan was using — a technical constraint Holland was entirely unaware of when he stepped on set for the first time.
"Working with the IMAX cameras for the first time is an experience. It is unlike anything I have ever seen before, and I didn't know that it only ran for three minutes."
Holland told Fandango that he turned to co-star Jon Bernthal in mounting confusion as Nolan repeatedly stopped filming, whispering: "Why does he keep cutting? Why does he keep doing that?" The answer came not from the director himself but from stunt coordinator George Cottle, who had to set the record straight.
"George Cottle was like, 'No, no, no, no, no — there's only three minutes in the mag.' I was like, 'Oh, thank God. I thought I was totally sh***ing the bed in this scene.'"
A Rainbow That Belonged in a Different Film Entirely
The IMAX confusion was not the only moment that caught Holland off guard. The actor also recalled a separate incident during production when filming had to be paused entirely — not for technical reasons, but because nature decided to stage its own intervention.
In an interview with Empire, Holland described a scene in which his character was supposed to be returning to a castle, when an enormous rainbow appeared directly behind it. The sight was not exactly in keeping with the tone of Nolan's mythological epic.
"The most preposterous rainbow was coming out of the castle I was supposed to be going home to," Holland said. "It looked like something out of My Little Pony." Production was halted until the rainbow cleared and the shot could be attempted again without the unintentionally whimsical backdrop.
The anecdote quickly took on a life of its own online, with fans joking that Nolan — the director behind Oppenheimer, Dunkirk and The Dark Knight — had been defeated by a colourful arch of light. One X user launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign under the hashtag #ReleaseTheRainbowCut.
The Biggest Cast Nolan Has Ever Assembled
Despite the early nerves and the meteorological chaos, Holland has been nothing but glowing about the experience overall. He called working on The Odyssey "the best experience I've ever had on a film set" and praised Nolan and producer Emma Thomas, saying he had "never seen someone that can work the way they do."
In Nolan's adaptation of Homer's epic, Holland plays Telemachus, the son of Matt Damon's Odysseus, whose story runs in parallel to his father's decade-long odyssey home from the Trojan War. Telemachus must defend the kingdom of Ithaca alongside his mother, Queen Penelope, played by Anne Hathaway, while contending with a household full of aggressive suitors led by Robert Pattinson's Antinous. Zendaya appears as the goddess Athena, who guides Odysseus on his journey.
The full ensemble — one of the largest ever assembled for a Nolan film — also includes Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong'o, Elliot Page, Mia Goth, Benny Safdie, Jon Bernthal and John Leguizamo, with cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema and a score by Ludwig Göransson, both Oscar winners and longtime Nolan collaborators.
The Odyssey opens in cinemas on 17 July. Rainbows not included — unless, of course, Nolan has a change of heart about the extended cut.
