When Christopher Nolan was asked what captivated him about The Odyssey enough to make a film out of the ancient Greek epic, he cited a relatively modern author. “I think it’s the Emily Wilson translation that begins, ‘Tell me about a complicated man,’” the filmmaker told Empire magazine last November. “The genius of the character, the cleverness, the inventiveness of him, that was a huge part of what interested me. He’s not just a soldier. He’s an amazing strategist, a very wily person.”
All of those things could be said of Emily Wilson herself. The classics professor from the University of Pennsylvania crafted a new adaptation of Homer’s 12,109-line poem in 2017—an effort that required strategy, wiles, cleverness, and inventiveness. Given that adaptation naturally means interpretation, Wilson also became an unwitting soldier in the battles that ensued over how she retold the story.
But—people were debating and engaging with a text that was thousands of years old. Something there must have resonated, and Wilson was credited with making the old story relevant again.
She expected it might sell only a few thousand copies, given how many other English-language adaptations were out there, dating back to George Chapman’s from the early 1600s. But surprisingly, her take on The Odyssey became a blockbuster among booksellers, long before Nolan decided to make his blockbuster for the screen.
Nolan’s film has only galvanized more sales, although he penned his script based off of many interpretations of Homer’s tale, weaving in parts of Virgil’s The Aeneid and Aeschylus’s Agamemnon as well. Wilson told Esquire she has never spoken to Nolan—but she hopes to someday.
She told us what she’d love to ask him, but it’s clear she has a lot to say about The Odyssey herself, and what that long-ago story has to teach us about ourselves right now.
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Matt Damon in The Odyssey / photo by: Universal
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Sam Neill died on Monday at the age of 78. The Jurassic Park actor was previously diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2022, though he was reportedly cancer-free, according to his family. In a piece for Esquire, Anthony Breznican wrote about what he called Neill’s “great power”:
“On the surface, he emoted an air of icy confidence, whether it was as the paleontologist Alan Grant in 1992’s Jurassic Park, the suspicious husband who discovers his wife’s unthinkably twisted secrets in 1981’s Possession, the insurance investigator who unwittingly opens a case into cosmic evil in 1994’s In the Mouth of Madness, or that same year as the playfully scandalous painter of nudes in Sirens. He entered these stories with the swagger of someone who knows his shit and isn’t going to be thrown off course.”
If you have a story to share about watching one of Neill’s movies, write to me at josh.rosenberg@hearst.com.
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The Continuing Adventures of the Esquire Entertainment Desk
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The 2026 Emmy Award nominations were revealed on Wednesday, with Widow’s Bay, Hacks, and The Pitt dominating the competition. We noted the biggest snubs and surprises on the list, such as leaving out Jeremy Allen White for The Bear and arguably Taylor Sheridan’s best year of TV yet. See if you agree here.
Searching for something to listen to this summer? Alan Light picked the ten best albums of the year, including Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, and the latest from Paul McCartney. Check out the list here.
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RIP Sam Niell! / photo by: Universal Pictures//Getty Images
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The Cliff-Hanger's Winners and Losers of the Week
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Winner: Trinity & Bryce
The Love Island USA couple won season 8 of the reality dating series quite decisively last night. They proved that love is real so convincingly that I don’t even remember host Ariana Madix even asking if they wanted to split the prize money or not.
Winner: Warner Bros.
When the Emmys revealed their nominations on Monday, HBO’s Hacks broke the record for the most honors for a comedy series in a single year. Plus, The Pitt season 2 led the entire race with 25 nominations… and Warner Bros. still wants to sell to Paramount?
Winner: Whoever the New Minions Movie Was Made For
Minions & Monsters, the seventh film in the Despicable Me franchise, features the cutesy yellow bean creatures paying homage to Old Hollywood. They parody Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Buster Keaton’s The General, and other classic black-and-white films. Who is this for again?
Loser: Underdogs
The top four seeds of the 2026 FIFA World Cup—France, Spain, England, and Argentina—are all set to compete for the championship now that they’ve knocked out all the exciting dark-horse contenders. Are we still excited? Maybe I’m just a sucker for the underdog.
Winner: David Chase
The Sopranos creator revealed that he’s always “worried” about the HBO drama’s lasting impact, even though audiences continually prove him wrong. “I thought, That’s going to fade away,” he told a recent panel at a film festival in the Czech Republic. “It hasn’t happened yet.” And it never will, Mr. Chase!
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