Why Shogun Actor Cosmo Jarvis Left Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey

FX

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

When Christopher Nolan began casting "The Odyssey" in 2024, it quickly became clear that he wasn't messing around. By the end of the year, he'd landed Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o, and Charlize Theron. Another round of casting hit in early 2025, with big and/or interesting names like Eliot Page, Jon Bernthal, Samantha Morton, Mia Goth, and John Leguizamo joining the production.

This was, of course, nothing new for Nolan. After he established himself as a formidable filmmaking talent 25 years ago with "Memento" (still his finest film), major stars began lining up to work with him. It seems like Nolan can get just about any actor he wants, but, to his credit, he's never gone with a big name just to stir up some hype. He's erred a few times (most notably with Katie Holmes, a fine performer who just wasn't right for the role of Rachel Dawes in "Batman Begins"), but mostly his instincts (and those of his longtime casting director John Papsidera) have been spot on.

While Nolan and company weren't initially disclosing which actors had been cast in which roles, I was excited when he brought Cosmo Jarvis, who'd turned in excellent work as John Blackthorne on FX's Primetime Emmy smash "Shōgun," on board. He wasn't attached for long. A scheduling conflict knocked him out of Nolan's epic, leading to his replacement by Logan Marshall-Green as Melanthius. In most cases, actors would be gravely disappointed to miss an opportunity to work with one of our greatest living filmmakers. But when it comes to Jarvis' career as an actor, playing murderous dictator Joseph Stalin might be a flashier part.

A24

Based on the 2007 nonfiction book "Young Stalin" by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jarvis will play the brutal despot who turned the Soviet Union into a global superpower, but did so by savagely consolidating power. Stalin was responsible for up to, if not more than, one million deaths, and maintained his grip on the country by waging a campaign of fear. Unswerving loyalty was the key to survival, and he had more than enough sniveling lackeys willing to gas him up on the daily.

Montefiore's book obviously details Stalin's rise to power, which is a story we haven't seen much of in movies (we have, however, seen the glorious "The Death of Stalin"). Given Stalin's disturbing cult-of-personality similarities to President Donald J. Trump, there's tremendous potential for filmmaker Géla Babluani to make a disturbing and deeply illuminating document of an aggrieved man being twisted into an autocratic monster. This feels like a change of pace for Jarvis (though he was also superb in Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza's "Warfare"), so I'm excited to see what he can do with a very tricky role.