Casting Away: Selecting the Best Actors for Historical Movie Roles

We wade into the current Helen of Troy in Nolan's Odyssey debate to discuss the diverse casting for selected movie roles.  

Transcript

Casting Away:  Selecting the Best Actors for Historical Movie Roles.  

February 2026

There is currently an online debate back and forth about the casting of what could be the most compelling movie of 2026, Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey.  The debate centers on Nolan’s casting of Kenyan-born actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy.  In the Iliad, which mentions Helen only six times, she is described as “white-armed Helen.”

The Iliad disapproves of the character of Helen, who ran off with the Trojan prince Paris, from her husband, Menelaus, King of Sparta, “My dear father-in-law, whom I respect and honor, how I wish I’d chosen evil death, when I came here with your son, leaving behind my married home, companions, darling child.” Wait, a child?  I have seen several depictions of Helen leaving her bellicose older husband for a much younger and better-looking Paris, but leaving a child behind?  

The epic poem later has Helen self-describe herself as a whore and “a dog, evil-contriving and abhorred.” I always find it interesting that the work has Helen showing such contrition for her acts, but Paris, equally culpable in their affair, has little such self-recrimination. But this is not about early 7th-century BC Greek sensibilities.  In 2004’s Movie Troy, Helen is depicted by blond-haired, blue-eyed, German-born actress Diane Kruger.  Obviously white armed.  

Both Kruger and Nyong’o are very attractive women, which one would think is a must about a tale in which two nations, in the persons of Menelaus, whose brother is the most prominent king in Greece, and Paris, son of the King of Troy, ostensibly, go to war over.  Yet it is not in Homer that we get one of the defining statements of her purported beauty. “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” That is from 1604 in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. 

In Helen’s final appearance in the Iliad, we get allusions to her being the daughter of Zeus and Leda, a hint at her origins.  “This is the twentieth year since I went away and left my native land.”  So Helen is Greek, which certainly makes more sense than a blue-eyed German or dark-skinned Kenyan.

But is this debate not silly on its merits?  The Iliad is replete with tales of the gods directly intervening in the war. In fact, it was really they, and not Helen, who instigated the whole thing because it was Aphrodite who put the idea of Helen in Paris’s mushy, narcissistic head.  

And are we to believe a Bronze Age army could sit in front of a single city for ten years?  The logistics would have been daunting, as by the end of the first year, they would have picked the place clean of food.  Maybe provisioned by ships, but even that is dicey.  And what of disease?  It was a greater threat to ancient and medieval armies than battle.  An army sitting in one place, with the usual filthy conditions and lack of nutrition that inevitably create microbes capable of wiping out the bravest and best-led armies.  Not only are the Iliad and the Odyssey works of fiction, but there is also a vigorous debate about whether Homer himself was real.  

We do know there was some conflict between the Greek cities and those of a city located in the Troad, a region of Anatolia.  But Agamemnon, Ajax, Hector, Priam, and Achilles? Probably made up, and thus Helen as well.  So, since Helen is fictional, who cares what she looks like?

Because casting matters to a movie or TV show.  Note that I mentioned the great beauty of both actresses in question.  Nolan did not cast what, by consensus, would be an average-looking woman.  Nor did he cast an older actress (Nyong’o is 42 but looks 32).  To do so would put the entire premise of two men willing to murder each other over a woman into doubt.  And there is the crux.  Nolan wanted that desire on the part of Paris and Menelaus to be believable, to serve the plot, to have us, the audience, buy into the moment. To justify the concept of a face launching 1000 ships.  

And here is where I have a big issue with diversity casting.  I will define diversity casting as placing an actor, almost always of color, in the role of a European-descended historical figure.  Given the leftist proclivities of casting agents, it is almost always a person of color cast into a historically white role.  I have seen the opposite, of course.  John Wayne playing Mongolian Genghis Khan or Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese man in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  Both were terrible in these roles for many reasons.  One of the few exceptions to a white actor playing a black man was in 1965’s Othello, in which Lawrence Olivier played the titular character, in blackface no less.  Yet Wayne’s Kahn was 1956.  Oliver’s Othello was over 60 years ago.  More recently, it has been scarce.  A black actor played every historical figure from MLK jr. in Selma (David Oyelowo) to the Woman King (that title makes no sense BTW) Nanisca, a Nigerian historical figure played by Viola Davis.  

But the opposite is not true today.  Jason Forbes and Elander Moore were cast in the BBC production King & Conqueror as white Anglo-Danish nobles. Guyanese actress Golda Rosheuvel, portrays German born Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton.  

This is my condemnation of such choices.  If your production has any aspirations to historical accuracy, if it is based on the so-called True Events, then the casting needs to be as accurate as possible, which is why Wayne, as a Mongolian, is embarrassing.  In Netflix’s excellent Death By Lightning, the streets of 1880 Chicago were depicted as having a smattering of blacks among the whites.  But there were over 6,000 blacks in the city, and though concentrated on the South side, they were present in a way they were not in 1066 England, especially among the noble classes. Yet the choices not for extras, but named characters are all accurate by race. All our white, except for black historical figures such as Blanche Bruce or Charles Purvis.  Bradley Whitford was a great James Blaine.  Michael Shannon disappeared into Garfield, and Nick Offerman as Arthur was a casting coup.  You find yourself following the drama of James Garfield and Charles Guiteau, not pondering who is playing the role.  It is a ticket to investment and engagement in the story, similar to featuring a beautiful Helen.   

The minute you see a black Earl of Merica, as in King and Conqueror, or a Russian noble, as in the Catherine the Great comedy The Great, you are breaking the fourth wall; you are losing any sense that we are watching a depiction of history.  You might as well have an actor speak directly to the audience, as is done in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town or Ferris on his titular Day Off.  And as noted, the opposite would never be tried today.  A white actor playing Malcolm X or the Malian Emperor Mansa Musa would immediately ruin the story (much less the hue and cry from black activists).  

But let’s get back to the original story here.  The Iliad is a work of fiction.  So is Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton, with its black duke and queen. As is 2021’s Macbeth, which features a Scottish thane played by Denzel Washington.  And I would argue so is The Great.  Though the show is about Catherine the Great and Peter III, it is very much tongue-in-cheek.  At one point, the Emperor of Russia and the King of Sweden start bickering and wrestling on a dining room table, broken up by their wives.  This never happened.  But in a sense, all of these were breaking the fourth wall. 

We do not really believe that the New York-born Washington was the Scottish Macbeth or a Roman Senator in Gladiator II. He does not even try an accent.  Whether a Harlem gangster, a corrupt cop, or the King of Scotland, he always sounds exactly like Denzel Washington.  The point in Macbeth is the words, the poetry on offer. Macbeth has witches who say “Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”  With stuff like this, you can get away with a lot.  And The Great has no pretensions to history; it is instead a farcical romp set in 18th-century Russia.  Bridgerton is not supposed to be Masterpiece Theater. 

Would all of these productions benefit from closer-to-native casting?  I get back to the Helen principle.  The closer you adhere to casting that looks like the place and times, the better the experience. Macbeth is amazing. How much more amazing with a great Scottish actor like Brian Cox, who, by the way, was Agamemnon in Troy.  Ok, maybe not better than Denzel Washington but then who is? 

And this is not just about race.  49 at the time, Joaquin Phoenix portrayed Napoleon in his 20s and 30s, and the age gap showed.  5’11 Maximillian Schell played 6’6” Peter the Great, and it showed.  There are ways around this.  In the Green Mile, Michael Duncan’s Clark was filmed on ramps to show the character’s 6’5” height.  In the movie Lincoln, arguably the best casting in any historical drama, Daniel Day-Lewis, already tall at 6’2”, is often filmed from a lower angle to make him look like Lincoln’s 6” 4” – towering over his contemporaries.  

And it is not just age and height.  Timothy Chalamet portrayed English Warrior King Henry V in The King.  Chalamet is a fine actor, but I think an angry 12-year-old girl could take him in a fair fight, and this is the guy who fought with distinction at Shrewsbury and won Agincourt?  Better was Kenneth Branagh whose 1989 movie better portrayed Henry’s physicality. And speaking of Henrys, I loved Damien Lewis’ portrayal of Henry VIII in Wolf Hall far more than Jonathan Rhys Meyers.  The latter is a fine actor.  But Henry was 6’2”, Lewis is 6’1” and a red head to boot. Rhys Meyers is 5’10” and a brunette. They also portray Lewis in baggy clothes to emphasize that Henry was a big man for his time.  And yet Wolf Hall, which cast race-appropriate actors in its first season, cast Lady Margery Seymour and Anne Seymour with black actresses. Though these are minor roles, when do they pop into a Tudor Court? Fourth wall, broken.  Not Cromwell and Henry, but guys playing the parts of Cromwell and Henry.  

My rules. If it is historical, it is a must to cast actors who reflect the time and place, who portray salient qualities of the historical figures. And not just the color of their skin but height, voice, appearance and fashion.  If fiction, adhere as closely as possible.  Not sure why Melia Kreiling, a beautiful Greek actress, was not cast as Helen?  There is an exception, though. If you have a chance to cast Washington in just about anything, go for it. He almost (almost) saved the unsalvageable Gladiator II.