Zendaya reveals her mouth froze during ‘The Odyssey’ filming in Iceland, while Nolan calls her performance “always perfect.”

Shooting your first Christopher Nolan movie would rattle anyone. Do it outdoors in sub-zero Iceland, and even a two-time Emmy winner can seize up, literally.

Zendaya’s first day on The Odyssey set went sideways in the most physical way imaginable, because the cold got so brutal that her mouth flat out refused to form the words she had rehearsed.

Iceland Froze Her Mouth Shut on Take One

Her first scenes on The Odyssey set put her outdoors in Iceland as Athena, the goddess of wisdom and Odysseus’s divine guide, and she walked in over-prepared.

“I had my lines and I wanted to have them so down. I psyched myself out a little bit,” she told Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. Then the weather took the wheel. “It was particularly cold. It was in Iceland. My mouth was just frozen. There is nothing coming out. My mouth would not move. Literally. It came out like, ‘Blah blah blah.’ So embarrassing.”

She got through it the way she gets through everything, by locking in. Sharing scenes with actors she has admired for years made the frostbite worth it. “Part of you has to compartmentalize to a degree. Lock in, we’re working,” she said, calling the whole thing “such a pleasure and a gift.”

Damon has told his own cold and wet war stories from this shoot, so Zendaya was in good, shivering company.

Nolan Called Her ‘Always Perfect,’ and the Cast Made Him Pay for It

Whatever Zendaya thought she botched, Nolan saw something else entirely. He told Fandango she was the one actor he never had a single note for. “She was always perfect. Always perfect,” he said.

That is a dangerous thing to announce on a set stacked with A-listers, and the rest of the cast let him hear about it. Holland has publicly copped to still waiting on his own “perfect” rating, and Damon confirmed the praise became a running bit among the ensemble. Nolan’s response was pure deadpan. “I felt guilty when I first heard they were complaining about it, but then I realized that’s kind of on them and not me.”

He wanted her from the jump. Casting her as Athena, he told Elle, came down to her “iconic” presence. “I mean, she’s literally playing a goddess, it’s a tall order. She’s a true movie star, but also an incredible actor.”

Coming from a director who tends to talk about his films in terms of cameras and formats rather than performances, that is about as effusive as Nolan gets.

Tom Holland is Telemachus in THE ODYSSEY, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

Tom Holland Melted Down Too, and the IMAX Cameras Were to Blame

Zendaya was not the only lead to have a rough opening day on The Odyssey set. Tom Holland, who plays Telemachus, spent his first day convinced Nolan hated his work, and the reason was purely mechanical. 

The Odyssey is the first Hollywood feature shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, and a 65mm IMAX magazine holds only about three minutes of footage before it has to be swapped. Nobody warned Holland.

“I didn’t know that it only ran for three minutes,” he told Fandango. “I was with Jon [Bernthal], like, ‘Why does he keep cutting?’”

He spiraled until stunt coordinator George Cottle finally clued him in. “No, no, no, there’s only three minutes in the mag,” Cottle told him. “I was like, ‘Oh, thank god.’ I thought I was totally sh*tting the bed in this scene.”

THE ODYSSEY, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

Two Rough First Days, One Very Nolan Explanation

Here is what I love about both stories. A two-time Emmy winner and the actor who has anchored four Spider-Man movies both walked onto The Odyssey set and briefly came undone, one because the weather beat her and one because he misread a film magazine.

That is the Nolan effect in a nutshell. He builds a set so exacting and so devoted to practical, large-format filmmaking that even his biggest stars second-guess themselves before lunch on day one. The commitment is not a pose, either. Zendaya’s Athena transformation was reportedly so complete that her The Drama co-star Robert Pattinson did not recognize her on set, per People.

The frozen-jaw clip will rack up the views, and it should, because it is funny and human. What sticks with me is Nolan singling out one actor as “always perfect” and then breezily shrugging off the jealousy it stirred up. That is a filmmaker who knows exactly what he has. 

The Odyssey carries a reported $250 million budget and an R rating, and it opens July 17 from Universal, with Matt Damon leading as Odysseus alongside Anne Hathaway, Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Elliot Page, Benny Safdie, Mia Goth, and John Leguizamo.

On July 17, the rest of us find out whether the frostbite was worth it.