The Odyssey actors reveal the most physically difficult scene to film: 'You don't feel necessarily safe'

Published Jul 18, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT

But in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, the Trojan Horse plays a major role in a series of flashbacks that show how it was brought inside the walls of Troy and how those Greek soldiers hiding within then besieged the city from within and ended the war once and for all. It's a major change that leads to one of the movie's most impressive set pieces in a film full of them. But for the actors cramped inside the horse during those scenes, it was… slightly less epic.

Polygon spoke to two members of the cast, Jon Bernthal (who plays Menelaus, the Greek king of Sparta and Helen's cuckolded husband) and Himesh Patel (Odysseus's second-in-command, Eurylochus) about their experience filming the Trojan Horse scenes in The Odyssey. They describe a brutal set piece that only Nolan could pull off.

"When you're in that horse, there's nothing in there to make you feel comfortable," Bernthal tells Polygon. "You don't feel necessarily safe or okay."

The actor, who also plays The Punisher in Marvel's Cinematic Universe and the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day, credits Nolan with creating an environment where the cast didn't need to do much work to get into character as a bunch of soldiers crammed into a big wooden horse, especially for an earlier scene where the Greeks leave the horse on the beach as a gift for the Trojans to find.

"When the horse was still in the water, and the water was coming in, that water was freezing cold," Bernthal says. "It's no joke. There's no frills. There's zero. Nothing. And I really love that. I call it 'No acting acting.' He [Nolan] just puts you in it."

Image: Universal Pictures

Patel never had to physically get into the Trojan Horse, though his character is part of the siege of Troy. However, the ensuing action sequence, which Nolan filmed at night in Aït Benhaddou, an 11th-century fortified village in Morocco, was still pretty challenging.

"You'd get back to your hotel room at like 3 a.m. and just sand coming out of every — sand everywhere, and like grease," Patel says.

Image: Universal Pictures

Still, Patel admits that Bernthal and the rest of the cast packed into the Trojan Horse had it much worse.

"Apparently even Jon was shivering," Patel says. "If you get Jon Bernthal shivering, that's something. So it was a challenge for those guys."

Even so, Bernthal swears up and down he wouldn't change a thing about the experience.

"I loved being in that horse," he says. "I loved rappelling out of that horse. It really did feel dangerous, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

The Odyssey is in theaters now.