Matt Damon Opens Up About The Odyssey Costume Physical Toll

The stars of The Odyssey have made no secret of the fact that shooting Christopher Nolan’s new movie was a particularly gruelling experience – but Matt Damon has admitted there was one part of playing Odysseus that he was definitely not prepared for.

Matt recently made an appearance on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM show, where the host had one burning question about the Oscar winner’s costume.

“All the action sequences were shot… wearing sandals?” the Watch What Happens Live host questioned, to which Matt confirmed that the footwear came with its own set of problems.

He pointed out: “A lot of us were middle-aged people, and what we got was back pain.

“Oh my god, running through Troy, it’s all stone, and you’re in these sandals, and they’re very real. And yeah, they’d come off, our feet were all scuffed up.

“But more than the little scratches and cuts on your feet, it was the back pain for us.”

“It was a heavy Advil movie in those weeks we were doing that action stuff,” he joked.

Last month, Matt told GQ that there had been a running joke among the cast and crew that there wasn’t a “single easy location” on The Odyssey’s schedule.

“Every time we’d go somewhere, we’d be like, ‘Well, Iceland will be easier’. And then it’s raining sideways and it’s fucking freezing. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, easy? Hey, hold my beer’,” he recalled.

While The Odyssey’s shoot eventually concluded on a lot in Los Angeles, Matt admitted: “Sure enough, we showed up [to the set] and Chris has two jet engines blowing so much water at us. So it was kind of a fitting end. Even the controlled environment was cold, wet, and a little bit miserable.”

During a separate interview on Amy Poehler’s podcast Good Hang, the Bourne Identity star also spoke candidly about “getting jacked” for the role in his 50s, and the struggles that came along with that.

The Odyssey is in cinemas now.