Mia Goth agreed to join The Odyssey before she knew it was The Odyssey. In a new interview with i-D, the actor says she met Christopher Nolan during the January 2025 fires near her Pasadena home. He offered her a role that day, but the studio required her to sign on before she could read the script or learn which character she would play.
A few days later, Goth visited Universal and discovered that Nolan was making his version of Homer’s epic. Her character was Melantho, a maid in Odysseus’s household. The role was not a large one, but she did not regret taking it. “It’s a very small part, but I would do it all again in a heartbeat,” she told i-D.
Why did she accept a mystery part?
It was a chance to work with Nolan. Goth had auditioned and met him without knowing the full project, then trusted the director enough to make the leap. That is a striking choice for an actor whose best-known films, including X and Pearl, gave her enormous room to shape the main character.
The photo here comes from Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, not The Odyssey. Goth plays two parts in that film, Elizabeth and Claire. It is one of the projects she had just finished when the Nolan meeting came along, and the new interview looks back at how she moved between such different sets.
Then came a very different director
Goth also talks about Fonda, her new film with Justine Triet, the director of Anatomy of a Fall. She spent months making it in France and describes coming home changed by the experience. After the carefully planned scale of Nolan’s film, Triet’s process could spend hours working through a single scene until it felt right.
Goth had been looking for a working relationship that felt like the one she found with Lars von Trier early in her career. Of Triet, she told i-D, “With Justine, I feel like I found them.” She is not saying one kind of set is better than the other. She is explaining what she needs from the next part of her career.
A small role can still matter
The Odyssey had already opened in theaters in July when this interview appeared. Goth’s account adds a piece of the casting story: she committed to the director before she had the character details most actors would expect. That makes her brief turn as Melantho less of a mystery to the audience and more of a clear choice by the performer.
She does not offer a hidden scene or a new release announcement. The interesting part is how a performer associated with bold lead roles can find value in a much smaller one, then leave that experience ready for an entirely different collaboration.
For the film’s cast, story and formats, see our The Odyssey movie page.
