Christopher Nolan's Daughter Had A Crucial Hidden Role In The Odyssey

This article contains spoilers for "The Odyssey."

Did you know that multiple people portrayed Athena in Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey"? OK, yes, technically Zendaya is the only one who appears as the goddess on screen (although, the film supports the interpretation that she's actually just a woman of Troy who was murdered by Odysseus's men, and she has taken the form of Athena only in his mind), but an unexpected person also gives voice to the goddess in the score: Flora Nolan, Christopher Nolan's daughter.

Mutant has released a killer vinyl version of Oscar heavyweight Ludwig Göransson's equally killer score for "The Odyssey," and in the liner notes, Göransson explains the moment that the entire sonic landscape of the music fell into place for him, and it involved the director's daughter singing on a track:

"I completed a piano sketch of Odysseus's theme with the intention of having it sung by a young female voice. I called ['The Odyssey' producer and Christopher Nolan's wife] Emma Thomas and asked if their daughter Flora could come to the studio to record. When I heard Flora sing the melody, I immediately knew that this was the voice of Athena singing 'Odysseus's Lament.' I was now confident in my material, and I was able to hand 58 minutes of new music off to Chris right as he was heading back to Europe to shoot."

You can hear Flora's voice come into the track at the 3:43 mark below:

Flora appears in Nolan's Best Picture winner "Oppenheimer" in another small but powerful role. In that movie, after the Trinity Test is successful and the atomic bomb is dropped on Japan, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is immediately haunted by the magnitude of what he has wrought on the world. But he's expected to give a rah-rah speech to his colleagues in a Los Alamos gymnasium, and while doing so, he's struck by a vision of a young woman with skin ripping off her face. That young woman is played by Flora Nolan, which is a fascinating casting choice for a director who, right or wrong, audiences often see reflected in his protagonists.

"Truthfully, I try not to analyze my own intentions," Christopher Nolan told Deadline when asked about this bit of casting. "But the point is that if you create the ultimate destructive power it will also destroy those who are near and dear to you. So I suppose this was my way of expressing that in what, to me, were the strongest possible terms."

I'd argue this is an under-discussed aspect of what makes Nolan's films great: Despite the massive budgets and bombastic cinematic worlds he creates, each of his movies feels genuinely personal. Putting his daughter in these small but crucial roles only underscores that idea.