Shortly before the 2024 holidays, Emma Thomas — producer, Christopher Nolan’s wife and keeper of his secrets — met Himesh Patel in London and handed him a physical copy of the script. No email, no secure digital upload. Just text, scrolled across the table. “That’s the way he does things,” Patel says. “It’s a very secret operation.”
It turns out that this scenario was for OdysseyNolan’s long-awaited, $250 million film adaptation of the greatest adventure story ever told — gods, monsters, dark seas and all — with a cast that includes Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson and Matt Damon and a shooting trail that spanned six countries on three continents.
Of course, this wasn’t Patel’s first time working with Nolan, although the conditions were harsh Tenetin which the 35-year-old actor played a small role as an arms dealer, couldn’t be more different. For this 2020 time travel thriller, he got the testing aspects of Ocean XI He didn’t see a page of the actual script until he arrived on set in Tallinn, Estonia. Even then, they only gave him his own character scenes. “He has a kind of insider mentality with the people he works with,” Patel says of Nolan. “I had a lot of fun Tenet And I handled it really well, and I think that had a lot to do with it. He certainly does not need to ask anyone to return.
Patel grew up in a small village in central England, performed with The Young Actors Company in Cambridge, turned professional at 17, and spent the next nine years playing the quiet, bookish Tamwar Masood in the British soap opera. EastEnders. His first big break came in 2019, when he scored the lead role in Danny Boyle’s Beatles-inspired romantic comedy. yesterday. “In a sense, it was a baptism by fire, but it didn’t feel like fire because I had so much support,” he says of the film.
In the years between Tenet and OdysseyPatel appeared in Adam McKay’s film Don’t look up — as Jennifer Lawrence’s boyfriend, no less — and earned an Emmy Award and SAG Award nomination for his work on the HBO series. Station elevena post-apocalyptic series. He was unaware that the show or his performance was in the awards conversation until the nominations were announced. “Now that I’ve learned how the awards work – all the campaigning and effort that goes into them – I feel proud because they were more worthy of me.”
Nolan’s call came at an anxious moment. Patel was waiting for word on whether HBO would renew it Franchisea superhero parody film in which he starred alongside Daniel Brühl, Billy Magnussen, and Loly Adefobi. When his clients contacted him, he assumed that was the subject of the call. It wasn’t. the privilege The cancellation came a few weeks later. “It’s a real shame,” he says, not only for the series he thought was good, but for the actors he has become close friends with.
As it happened, the TV gods had other plans. He’s currently in Vancouver filming the long-awaited Ryan Coogler movie X-Files Reboot (He’s wearing a Pacific Northwest-appropriate fleece). He will join him Station eleven Co-star Danielle Deadwyler – The two never shared screen time in that series because their characters existed in different timelines, but they met in Chicago six years ago and have kept in touch. He can’t say much, including whether he will fill the role of Mulder or Scully. “There’s a wall right outside Ryan’s office,” he says, “and they took Polaroids of all of us, and we had to identify ourselves as skeptics or believers. I wrote that I was a believer — but only once out of 10.”
When it comes Odysseyin which Patel plays Eurylochus, Damon’s second-in-command, can reveal a little more. For example, Nolan insisted that the cast use American accents rather than Greek or British. This was the largest production Patel had ever worked on, and he was surprised to find that almost every scene and stunt shot was in-camera practical effects. That meant spending weeks on a boat in the open ocean, with an IMAX camera mounted on a nearby ship and another camera launched from a helicopter overhead. He spent another week in a cave in Greece, then shot from the top of the castle while the cast repeatedly climbed the mountain.
“It’s implicit in every job, but it’s even more compelling when a director trusts you to be their guy: Don’t screw this up,” Patel says.
So far, so good.
This story appeared in the June 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to subscribe.
