This story originally appeared on Them.
Filming Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was quite a grueling experience. Star Matt Damon recently described it as “more like an expedition than a movie,” saying that everyone on the cast was “pushed to kind of the limit of what they could do.”
Everyone, apparently, except for Elliot Page, who joked in an interview on The Daily Show this week that his Canadian upbringing prepared him for the harsh filming conditions of Nolan’s epic.
“The challenging things were probably just weather and temperature,” Page told host Desi Lydic. “I’m lucky in that I grew up working in Canada as a kid, so I’m used to working in some pretty brutal temperatures.”
“OK, take it easy, you have healthcare,” Lydic fired back, in one of the sit-down’s most humorous exchanges.
The Odyssey was filmed in 91 days across six countries, including Iceland, where black sand beaches on the southern coast stood in for Hades in one of Page’s most pivotal scenes. Cast members have described it as the most difficult shoot of their lives, with one sequence tasking several actors with cramming inside an actual Trojan Horse.
“When you’re in that horse, there’s nothing in there to make you feel comfortable,” Jon Bernthal told Polygon. “You don’t feel necessarily safe or okay.” (Hmm, spoken like a man who didn’t grow up in the Frozen North… Just kidding. Jon Bernthal could probably break my arm with a pinky.)
Page, 39, can indeed boast quite a Canadian filmography before his breakout Hollywood roles. His earliest listed parts on IMDb, for example, are in the 1997 TV movie Pit Pony and its subsequent CBC follow-up series, both of which filmed in the actor’s birthplace of Nova Scotia — primarily on soundstages and sets, sure, but some real-world locations, too. (Meanwhile, at 10 years old, I was getting unbearably cold when it rained in Southern California.)
But in seriousness, Page told Lydic that he managed to avoid much of the difficulties simply by only being in the movie for a few minutes of combined screentime. “I worked early on in the shoot, and then I was back later on in the shoot and, to be honest, couldn’t even understand how they were all still standing,” he said. “I definitely had an easier job than other people.”
Despite Page’s relatively brief appearances in The Odyssey, he plays a key role in the nearly three-hour-long film. Without venturing — odysseying? — too far into spoiler territory, his character Sinon — a Greek trickster involved in sneaking the aforementioned wooden horse into Troy — functions as the film’s moral center.
“Those were the initial conversations I had with Chris about this character, in Sinon, being the sort of consciousness facing Odysseus,” he said, adding, “It was the good kind of nerves” to be trusted with that pivotal of a part.
Page also opened up about his love of boxing after sharing an internet-breaking June photograph of the abs he had achieved through his training.
“I think I love how extremely difficult it is,” he told Lydic, when asked about his devotion to the sport. “Obviously from a physical standpoint, and tiny little adjustments you’re making with your body to get the outcome that you want, mixed with the mental intensity of it — and I can’t really think about anything else when I’m doing that.”
Boxing Day is notably celebrated in Canada, though my sources tell me that refers to something else.
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