Whoopi Goldberg Has a Blunt Message for Elliot Page's 'Odyssey' Haters: 'Don't Go See the Damn Movie'

Whoopi Goldberg doesn't do polite deflection, and on Tuesday's episode of The View she made that abundantly clear. When her co-hosts cued up a clip of Ben Shapiro declaring it "stupid to cast Elliot Page as a dude" in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, Goldberg's response was essentially: your loss, literally.

"A lot of conservatives who see this are going to feel the same way. That's okay," she said — before landing the actual point. "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 kept going: "You don't like Elliot Page? Don't go see the damn movie. Don't do it. We will be okay if you don't go see it."

The View audience, you can imagine, was firmly on her side.

What the haters actually got wrong

The right-wing pile-on started before anyone had seen a single frame. Elon Musk, among the loudest voices, accused Nolan of "desecrating" the nearly 2,800-year-old source material — based on the false rumor that Page was playing Achilles. He isn't. Page plays Sinon, a Greek soldier opposite Matt Damon's Odysseus, in a supporting role that clocks maybe five minutes of screen time across a three-hour epic.

That factual error did nothing to quiet the noise, as Variety reported. Shapiro piled on anyway, griping that Page is "about 5'2 and 105 pounds soaking wet and has the voice of a woman." Which is a lot of words to say you're mad a trans man exists and works.

Racist objections to Lupita Nyong'o's dual casting as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra ran alongside the transphobic ones — the same playbook, different target.

What the film actually delivered

The Odyssey opened to the biggest debut of Nolan's career and, as Deadline noted, has now cleared $300 million worldwide. It sits at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 97% audience score — which is the kind of number that makes Twitter discourse feel especially small.

Page's performance, despite the brevity of his screen time, has drawn some of the film's warmest notices. Empire's Ben Travis called it "rageful and righteous, but tragic and touching," naming the character the soul of the entire film. Variety's own review landed on "tersely vulnerable." Nolan himself — who first cast Page in Inception back in 2010, a full decade before Page came out — told Rolling Stone that Page "brings something really special" to the role, adding: "You're looking to put a face on the tragedy of war. And I think he did an incredible job."

Page himself, at last fall's New York Comic Con, put it simply: "To come back now — as you can imagine, being more comfortable in yourself — makes these sorts of projects more enjoyable."

That line hits. A trans man, more at home in his own skin, stepping into a Nolan blockbuster and being called the soul of the movie. That's the arc.

Why this moment matters beyond the clapback

A trans actor in a major Christopher Nolan film isn't a political statement — it's just casting. The fact that it reads as transgressive to a certain corner of the internet says everything about that corner and nothing about the film. Goldberg's "don't go see it" framing is strategically sharp: it refuses to treat the haters as a constituency whose opinion the movie needs. It doesn't.

The View co-host Alyssa Farrah Griffin called The Odyssey "a masterpiece" and pointed out, with some irony, that the film's themes — family devotion, the costs of war, loyalty to home — are practically a conservative checklist. The outrage merchants couldn't take the win because the win required seeing past Elliot Page's name in the credits.

They didn't go. The movie crossed $300 million anyway. We are, as Whoopi promised, just fine.