The View host Whoopi Goldberg is fed up with people whining about who Christopher Nolan cast in his adaptation of The Odyssey.
MAGA has made the film a flashpoint for its inclusion of Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o and trans actor Eliot Page, even as the tell-tale signs of a hit film were evident a year ago when The Odyssey sold out its first round of advance tickets in minutes.
Since its release over the weekend, the film has grossed $282.1 million worldwide, according to Forbes. Goldberg slammed complainers on The View on Tuesday after her co-hosts praised the film as a “masterpiece.”
Reacting to a clip of right-wing podcast host Ben Shapiro slamming the film for casting Page, Goldberg said, “A lot of conservatives who see this are going to feel the same way. That’s OK. But I don’t understand. Why go see the movie? If you don’t want to see it, don’t go see it. Why do you care who’s cast in it?”
She continued, “I don’t understand this idea that if we hate it, everybody must hate it because we hate it for this reason. You don’t like Elliot Page? Don’t go see the damn movie. Don’t do it. We will be OK if you don’t go see it.”
Months before the film was released, right-wingers like Shapiro, most vocally led by X owner Elon Musk, criticized Nolan over early rumors about Page’s casting as Achilles—which turned out to be nothing but, as Page plays Odysseus’s (Matt Damon) cousin Sinon in the film.
Musk called the casting “one of the dumbest and twisted things I’ve ever heard,” but reserved most of his gripes for Nolan’s casting of Nyong’o, a Black woman, as Helen of Troy. Musk circulated posts arguing the role should have gone to a white woman and slamming Nolan’s choice as “racist against the Greek people.”
The View co-host Sunny Hostin slammed Musk as “racist” in February after he began attacking the film over Nyong’os casting online.
Republican host Alyssa Farah Griffin said the film, despite MAGA backlash, has a “conservative message” about “devotion to family, faith, and upholding institutions,” as she lauded the film.
Sunny Hostin remarked that she found that message to “sound liberal,” by contrast.
Joy Behar added that conservatives were too “stuck on woke” to see that perspective on the film.
Goldberg declared that she was particularly peeved by the use of the word “woke” to criticize The Odyssey. “I’m going to keep saying this to you people until you understand it. Ninety percent of America has never been asleep. They’ve been working to feed their families, they’ve been trying to get an education, they’ve been trying to borrow money from a bank, they’ve been trying to do all the things that people try to do every day.”
Shapiro, for his part, is now calling the film a “masterpiece” as well, urging conservatives to give it a chance despite the “unforced error” of casting a trans actor in a pivotal role.
