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“The Odyssey” director won’t let these “signifiers of modernity” remove actors from the movie world he created.
Key Points
- Christopher Nolan doesn’t want to see Ugg boots on the set of his films, declaring that they are a “signifier of modernity.”
- “There are just certain things that remind you you’re in the real world as opposed to the world we’re trying to create for the actors,” he said.
- The Odyssey is now in theaters.
Christopher Nolan has given these shoes the boot from movie sets.
The Odyssey director explained why Uggs are banned from his sets — and he has a pretty fair reason for kicking out the plush shoes. “Anne Hathaway said something interesting. She said ‘Chris says no Uggs on the set,’” Gayle King mentioned to the director on CBS Mornings. “What does that mean?’”
Nolan laughed. “You know, it’s a thing of — it’s a joke I have with Emily Blunt, and Anne [Hathaway] before then,” he began. “Sometimes actors will turn up, because the footwear hurts them, so they’ll turn up in these big fluffy comfy slippers.”
“And the funny thing is, you can be on a set, where you’ve got a guy holding a microphone, you’ve got a giant camera, you’ve got crew everywhere. But something like that can actually weirdly take you out of reality. And for me, I think that’s always been something, where, it’s like if someone’s eating a bag of chips off-camera or something,” the Oscar winner continued.
“There are just certain things that remind you you’re in the real world as opposed to the world we’re trying to create for the actors. I want to stay in the moment, we want the actors to stay in the moment. And so for me, Ugg boots are a signifier of modernity.”
Nolan acknowledged that the idea is “absurd,” but concluded that “Uggs are great.” When they’re not on the set of his movies, at least.
This isn’t Nolan’s first encounter with the trendy sheepskin shoes. Emily Blunt got the director a pair of Ugg slippers as a wrap gift after filming Oppenheimer, where the actress wore a pair on set.
“For people who have been on a set, people know how it works,” he said on The View in July 2023. “We’re there, losing the light, ‘Okay, we need the actors to come in,’ and sometimes they’ll come straight from wardrobe, but they’ll have these big coats on top and they’ll be wearing these big Ugg boots, because the shoes of the character are uncomfortable. You know, 1940s shoes.”
Blunt “used to drive me crazy” during shooting, Nolan added, when she would wear the boots instead of the period-appropriate footwear. “I’d immediately say to her, ‘Can you please just get rid of the boots, put the shoes on, and get ready to go?’” he recalled.
“And she got so sick of me saying that time after time, she thought I should join the cult of Ugg boots,” the Oscar winner added. Blunt surprised him with the “pretty comfortable” footwear, and Nolan understood the hype.
Blunt can confirm Nolan’s previous dislike of the shoes. “I’ve never known anyone to detest a pair of Uggs more than Chris Nolan,” she told USA Today in July 2023.
“I would sometimes put on some Uggs and I’d just get this withering look down to my feet — it was like being in The Devil Wears Prada again. Just the look down to the shoes. And I’d go, ‘I know, I know. But I’m just sitting on an apple box in the background today!’”
The actress sent Nolan a pair of slippers as a wrap gift, which his wife Emma Thomas called “brilliant.”
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The Odyssey is now in theaters.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
