At 35, Himesh Patel is in one of the busiest phases of his career. After playing Eurylochus, Odysseus’s second-in-command, in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, he shot the pilot for Ryan Coogler’s reboot of The X-Files. Between these two projects are collaborations with some of contemporary cinema’s most distinctive filmmakers, and a career that has steadily moved him beyond EastEnders’ Tamwar Masood, the character that made him familiar to British audiences.
For The X-Files reboot, Patel is enthusiastic, if deliberately guarded. “We’ve shot the pilot, and I had a great time,” he says. “It was such a privilege to work with Ryan Coogler.” What reassured him was the team’s affection for the original series. Coogler grew up watching The X-Files with his mother, while showrunner Jennifer Yale is also a fan. Patel says there is no attempt to simply wipe the slate clean. “It’s deeply respectful to what’s come before,” he says, adding that he is “really hopeful that we get to do more.”
In The Odyssey, Nolan’s sprawling interpretation of Homer’s epic, Patel plays Eurylochus opposite Matt Damon’s Odysseus. When producer Emma Thomas delivered the script to him, Patel did not initially realise how substantial the part was. “I was almost expecting them to say there had been a mistake,” he recalls.
Instead, he found himself playing a character whose importance lies not simply in being Odysseus’s second-in-command, but in the complicated relationship between loyalty, war and conscience. Nolan’s screenplay, Patel says, gave him something more conflicted to work with. “There was just a real depth that Chris added to the character, an emotional depth, which I loved,” he says. “I felt the relationship between Eurylochus and Odysseus was one of erosion of faith,” he says.
The role also brought Patel back into Nolan’s world after Tenet in 2020. If there is one thing he admires about working with the director, it is Nolan’s insistence on making even the fantastical feel physical. “He wants to capture things as viscerally and as realistically as possible,” Patel says.
In The Odyssey, that meant being surrounded by the kind of ingenuity Nolan has become known for, rather than relying heavily on computer-generated imagery. “I was just bowled over by the ingenuity and the creativity,” Patel says.
Patel’s career has become less about fitting into one particular kind of role and more about how far the door can open. The diverse casting of The Odyssey prompted online debate about putting actors from different backgrounds into a story rooted in European mythology. For Patel, however, the question is less about mythology than imagination. The problem, he argues, lies in the narrow idea of who is allowed to inhabit it.“If you can imagine a movie with a Cyclops in it, then I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you can imagine someone who’s not just a straight white guy in a role.”
He has seen the industry change since he started, but believes it has not changed enough. “I think progress has been slower,” he says. “But I also don’t want to admit defeat in any way.”