Jimmy Kimmel Live! guest host Colman Domingo used Monday’s show to mock right-wingers outraged over casting choices in Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey.
Domingo rolled a clip of podcaster Chris Cella complaining about Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Helen of Troy in the film. “Casting a Black woman as Helen of Troy is like casting a Black man to play Abraham Lincoln or a white dude to play MLK,” Cella said in an interview on the far-right One America News channel.
Domingo had a fact check ready. “Well, not exactly, because MLK was real. And Helen of Troy is as real as Harry Potter,” he said.
“But I’ll be honest, I agree with that strange little dude. Helen of Troy shouldn’t have been played by a Black woman. She should have been played by a Black man, specifically me!” The audience cheered the line from Domingo, who has appeared in more than a dozen films in the past three years, including Michael, Disclosure Day and The Running Man.
The backlash Domingo was mocking has been building for months. Conservative figures including Elon Musk and Newsmax anchor Rob Finnerty previously attacked Nolan’s casting of the Kenyan-born Nyong’o, with Musk claiming the director “desecrated” the source material to chase awards recognition.
Nyong’o has largely shrugged off the criticism, telling Elle magazine in an interview published last week that the film’s cast is “representative of the world” and that she wasn’t interested in mounting a defense, since “the criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.”
Domingo then offered conservatives outraged by the diverse cast an alternative. “I have a message for everyone who was upset about diversity and The Odyssey: If you want to see a film with a cast of all white people who are cursed by the gods, the Melania movie is currently streaming,” he said, referring to the widely panned documentary about first lady Melania Trump.
The joke doubles as a pointed reminder of just how badly that documentary performed. The Amazon MGM-produced film cost $75 million to make and promote but pulled in just $16 million at the box office. Weak ticket sales led to sparse theatrical showings, and in South Africa, the film was pulled from theaters entirely.
Meanwhile, the first family appears to have profited handsomely regardless of the film’s reception. According to President Trump’s annual financial disclosure report, the first lady earned $10.71 million from the documentary. Trump also reported roughly $521,000 from Melania’s memoir, published a month before the 2024 election, and just over $6 million from NFTs “and other collectibles.”
