That’s shocking coming from someone who just wrapped up the highest-grossing solo rap tour of all time, with raging crowds in the tens of thousands. But when Scott climbed atop a wooden table in an ancient castle on a remote Italian island to deliver some of the first lines in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” he was freaked out. After all, it was the first shot of the day, and his audience included Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson.
“All those actors were there, and I’m standing on the table,” he says. “And it wasn’t like Travis rager shit, or we’re kicking it at a function. No, this was some serious shit. There’s a camera right here in my face. Nolan’s right there. And they’re all actors — so everyone’s in their zone, locked in.”
On that day, on that table, Scott took a deep breath, raised his stave and went sicko mode: “A war. A man. A trick. A trick to break the walls of Troy and burn it screaming to the ground,” he bellowed, launching into the song of the hero, Odysseus, and his victory in the Trojan War.
In truth, it was also a bit of a test. “I threw him into the deep end, with a cast of hundreds of extras, movie stars right there,” Nolan tells me later, laughing, saying it was a conscious choice to put Scott’s close-up at the top of that day’s shoot. “I said, ‘OK, Travis, jump up on the table and start reciting the Song of Odysseus and hold the attention of the room.’”
Scott and Nolan’s relationship began when the rapper, then 29, contributed the end-credits track for Nolan’s 2020 film “Tenet.” And he ultimately co-wrote the end-credits song, “When I’m Home,” for “The Odyssey.” But that’s not what Nolan called on him to do here. “He’s a performer, but it is a very different thing to come as an actor,” the director explains. “I was very clear with Travis that I wasn’t hiring him as a musician.”
When adapting Homer’s nearly 2,700-year-old poem for the Imax screen, Nolan realized he needed to make the story accessible for today’s audiences and struck on the notion that rappers carry on the tradition of oral storytelling that poets did in ancient Greece. “I wanted somebody on-screen who would be reciting words and holding attention in the room in a very credible way, that we can relate to in today’s world, so that we would understand the drama and the emotion that comes from storytelling through poetry,” Nolan explains. “If you view it in rarefied terms, if you elevate it and have some very formal version of what a bard in the palace of Ithaca might be, I would find that alienating.”
Before reading Nolan’s script, Scott was already familiar with Homer’s poem. He first read “The Odyssey” when he was a kid named Jacques Bermon Webster II growing up on the outskirts of Houston. His paternal grandmother, Bernice Webster, who was an English professor, assigned it to him as part of his summer reading curriculum. “That summer, she made me do an essay on the book, and I did some CliffsNotes bullshit,” he says, laughing. “I got a whoopin’ because I lied about reading it.”
Today, Scott’s grandma feels pretty pleased with herself. “She’s like, ‘See? That’s why I made you read that book; now you’re in this movie,’” Scott says, beaming. “It’s actually crazy.”
Last week, Scott posted a text from his momma, Wanda Webster, making plans to take Grandma Bernice and Grandma Sealie Wood, his maternal grandmother, to see the film. “I might shut down a movie theater and invite my whole family and have them come,” Scott says. (His kids, Stormi, 8, and Aire, 4, with ex Kylie Jenner are probably too young for the R-rated adventure, no matter how classic.)
“A sit-down” isn’t exactly the best descriptor for the experience of interviewing Travis Scott; as we talk after a photo shoot in midtown Manhattan, he never stops moving. His legs are far too long for the low-slung coach, so he keeps adjusting his posture and fiddling with the zipper on the accent pillow. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and he’ll soon be heading uptown to see Jay-Z perform at Yankee Stadium, so one can forgive him for being a little antsy. Throughout the chat, the “Highest in the Room” hitmaker puffs on a blunt, putting it down only when he gets animated about a given subject and needs both hands to illustrate his point.
Thirty minutes earlier, he was staring down the barrel of the photographer’s lens while rocking a sleek Hermès suit on a boiling-hot rooftop in NoMad. It’s hard not to get goose bumps when he hits a supermodel pose while his psychedelic rap-trap track “Goosebumps” plays on a portable speaker. When he turns in profile, it’s clear why Nolan wanted to capture his visage on Imax film: He looks every bit a movie star.
Now we’re tucked away in his dressing room: He’s taken off his Rick Owen shades and thrown on baggy sweatpants and a faded Oasis T-shirt that offsets his chunky gold and diamond chains, and he’s geeking out over the 1979 film “The Warriors,” one of his favorites, about a street gang who must escape from the Bronx back to their home turf after being framed for the murder of a respected gang leader. “They’re like war heroes for peace,” he says.
Scott’s role in “The Odyssey” represents the next mountain the 10-time Grammy nominee will climb as part of a larger journey to becoming a big-screen power player. As we speak, the ink is drying on Scott’s first-look deal at Paramount Pictures, the latest move for his über-successful company, Cactus Jack.
“Creativity emanates from every pore of his body,” Paramount Pictures co-chair Josh Greenstein says, “from the way he dresses to the cars to the music to his taste in film.” (“The Warriors” was how Scott and Greenstein bonded when they met to discuss expanding the brand’s imprint at the historic Hollywood studio, along with Cactus Jack manager and GM David Stromberg.)
Over the past decade, nearly everything Scott has touched has turned to gold. What began in 2017 as a record label and music publishing company that represents some of the hottest names in rap, like Sheck Wes and Don Toliver, has evolved into a veritable ecosystem around Scott’s artistic and commercial endeavors. Cactus Jack’s consumer-products arm has collaborated with Nike and Jordan; “Fortnite”; luxury brands Saint Laurent, Dior and Audemars Piguet; and Hot Wheels, Reese’s Puffs and McDonald’s. Cactus Jack has also partnered with Paramount on consumer products — their limited-edition “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Scream” apparel drops sold out almost instantly.
The new deal expands that partnership, giving Scott the freedom to develop projects ranging from film and TV productions to theater and other experiential endeavors, all tapping into Cactus Jack’s global cultural influence. “I want to bring back amazing films, pictures and just creative good ideas. And [Paramount’s] not scared to make good ideas,” Scott says.
Scott realized long ago that music and film occupy the same space, but this endeavor formalizes that idea. “I was spending so much on music videos that they were like independent film budgets, and I wanted to figure out how we could make better use of that,” he says. “How can we take long-lasting ideas and structure to make them better than those three to four minutes?”
At the same time, the studio was shaping its next chapter, a key element of which is attracting younger audiences to movie theaters. At present, no artist connects with their fandom like Scott does. His “Circus Maximus Tour” lasted two and a half years, and the 2.2 million tickets sold brought in $265 million.
“His taste level moves culture. How many people can you say that about?” Greenstein says. “Everything he touches becomes culture, and that’s a superpower.”
Paramount teased their evolving relationship with Scott in a star-studded and Tom Cruise-narrated reel that debuted at CinemaCon earlier this year. As Cruise promises the studio is looking to promote “fresh new perspectives,” the camera does a barrel roll to reveal an iced-out Scott. His security stands in front of four chocolate brown luxury cars (it’s Cactus Jack’s signature color) parked in front of one of Paramount’s soundstages. Scott boards a golfcart (that’s also wrapped in brown hue), then his assistant jumps into the back, with his arms full of pink Goyard luggage, and they zip across the lot.
Scott doesn’t have a slate of projects in development at the studio yet, but he describes a genre he’d like to explore: “The illest shit right now is it’s almost like scary movies aren’t scary anymore; they’re exciting dramas. These dark thrillers where nothing scary happens till the end. It’s all suspense and buildup, good writing and maybe a cast you don’t even know, but you’re just so dialed in.”
He’s talking about movies like the Japanese chiller “Exit 8,” but the last film he caught in the cinema was “Michael.” Would he make a biopic about himself?
Definitely, he says. “I would do ‘Entourage’ again.”
Back to “The Warriors” for a second: Scott is aware Lin-Manuel Miranda is bringing the Paramount classic to Broadway next spring, but he’d be up to craft his own remake. “That would actually be kind of crazy,” Scott says, the wheels in his head visibly turning. “But I’ve been thinking, ‘Is that like a show? Or is it a movie again?’”
He’s particularly passionate about the theatrical experience, which makes Paramount a good home for his future work. “It’s cool to have the streaming and all, but keep movie theaters alive. There’s nothing more enjoyable than being like, ‘Hey, y’all want to go to the movies?’ “Everything’s becoming so lazy and couch potato, like, ‘Y’all want to go to the house and chill?’ That’s cool too, but it’s like, ‘Yo, let’s get out. Let’s breathe air. Let’s touch grass,’” Scott says, putting down his blunt as he grows exasperated.
“And then the thing is, these people spend so much time sound designing, and y’all’s cribs don’t even have home theater systems. So why are we fucking disrespecting the sound designers and all this crazy shit that you’re really supposed to intake in the movie?” He picks up the blunt to relight it. “I’m sorry,” he says, sheepishly, about his rant.
Where other artists, like Prince, were futurists whose genius was hampered by the era in which they lived, Scott has been incredibly successful at getting his big ideas across the finish line. For his first full-length album, 2015’s “Rodeo,” Scott planned to release an action figure with the physical copy of the record. And though that idea fell through, it became an important part of his lore — and he eventually got his own toys, thanks to McDonald’s and “Fortnite.” (The “Rodeo” toy was a low in Scott’s trajectory, but not nearly as low as the night in 2021 when 10 concertgoers died in a crowd crush while he was performing at his Astroworld Festival in Houston. The tragedy was personally devastating, but his professional partnerships ultimately held.)
This fall, the University of Southern California will launch a course about the creative ecosystem around Scott and Cactus Jack, unpacking how an individual can turn their talent into a full-scale creative platform. Much like your average Travis Scott-related drop, the 140 slots for the class were taken in about 20 minutes.
“I think he understands that what drives contemporary culture is experience and immersion,” says Dr. Josh Kun, a professor in the Communication and American Studies department at USC. “Fans and consumers and everyday folks want experiences, and they want to be immersed. They want to be hit at multiple levels. He really, really understands that, where lifestyle becomes an entire way of moving through the world.”
Nolan agrees, pointing to Scott’s “Circus Maximus” film as a prime example of what he’s capable of. The visual companion to his 2023 “Utopia” album, it features segments directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Harmony Korine, Gaspar Noé, Valdimar Jóhannsson, Kahlil Joseph and Scott himself. “Travis is super smart and super creative,” Nolan says. “There’s an understanding of cinematic virtues — the way in which you can involve an audience using their ears, but also their eyes — that I think is very natural to Travis. I think that’s why he’s excited to move into film.”
“It’s experiences that I wanted as a fan that I didn’t get,” he says simply. “So I’ve always told myself, ‘If I’m ever in this position, I just want to deliver the best experiences.’”
When it comes to making films, Scott learned a great deal during his sojourn on the “Odyssey” set. He showed up each day at 5 a.m. and hung out until 3 p.m. because he relished the opportunity to shadow Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema.
“Nobody was in their trailer,” Scott says. “That was new for me; I was used to doing what I’m doing and going back to the trailer. But I was really wanting to learn, so I didn’t really want to be in the trailer anyway.”
On set, he tracked behind Nolan and van Hoytema asking questions about their process and peering into the director’s monitor as they framed up a shot on the Imax cameras. “I’m looking in the camera. I’m all under the hood,” Scott says, laughing. “Ain’t no kicking it.”
What did he learn from observing Nolan? “Always see the vision through. Never go short on the vision.” It’s similar to wisdom that his mentor, Ye, imparted early in his career.
Just to be clear, “The Odyssey” isn’t Scott’s acting debut. His filmography includes the 2021 indie drama “Gully” and Korine’s hyper-stylized crime thriller “Aggro Dr1ft,” along with a cameo on HBO’s “Ballers.” He’ll appear as himself in the Owen Wilson-led comedy “Rolling Loud,” filmed during the hip-hop festival in 2024. (In the film, Wilson plays a dad who sneaks his underage son into the event because he’s a big Travis Scott fan. High jinks ensue, and Wilson winds up onstage with the rapper as he performs his megahit “Fe!n.”)
“I would love to act more,” Scott says. “I respect the true talents of the people that wake up every day and really grind.”
But acting, by nature, requires one to be in service of someone else’s vision, whereas Scott is more suited to be the visionary. As such, his focus is on producing, directing, composing and sound-scaping. “I feel like that’s where I can shine the most,” he says. “I love acting, but that’s way cooler.”
Reflecting on his overall goals, Scott adds, “I’m here to conquer who I am as an artist. In these side quests — these cool things I like to do — I never lose sight of the main goal. I’m still trying to do every stadium in the United States and the world. I’m working on an album right now, and that’s fucking amazing. And I’m constantly pushing myself to push the sonics to try to make something that I haven’t made before.”
Scott’s been hard at work on the follow-up to the double-platinum “Utopia,” his first No. 1 record. He carries the tracks for this mysterious sixth studio album around on an iPod, which fans and hip-hop heads spotted attached to his waistband while he took in a recent World Cup match in Houston with Stormi and Aire.
Scott won’t reveal much more about the new sound, but he’s listening to a wide range of influences, including Parliament, Oasis, Van Halen (for their “mega-choruses and hard bass lines,” he teases), Don Toliver, Raphael Saadiq and Daft Punk.
He’s been taking inspiration from his time on the road, making music for the person at the very back of the stadium. “I’m like, OK, I need to double down on trying to make something that can reach the person that’s all the way back in the bowl, so how do I reach them like the person that’s right next to me,” he says. “So that’s what I’m on — trying to elevate the show to a more theater aspect.”
He teases: “Stay tuned on how that’s going to happen. ‘Utopia’ was supposed to be a play. I want to try to bring back true experiences before they try to take them all down and make everything digital.”
With “The Odyssey” a major Oscar contender, the credits track could put Scott in the best original song race. “I still need a Grammy, but I would love to take home an Oscar. That’d be cool,” he says.
Scott has been nominated by the Recording Academy 10 times, but he’s never won. Does the thought of winning a Grammy motivate him?
He ponders the question, letting out a long wisp of smoke before answering. “It’s not why I do what I do,” he says of the elusive award. “I like to set goals, and I just want to achieve them. I noticed the people that get them always have that like, ‘It doesn’t matter’ [attitude]. To me, the award represents something, and to achieve that would be amazing.”
In March, Scott joined Nolan and composer Ludwig Göransson at the Directors Guild of America theater in West Hollywood to screen a cut of “The Odyssey.” Göransson had been noodling with an idea for the end-credits song featuring English singer-songwriter James Blake, and he wanted Scott to be involved.(One of Nolan’s favorite songs from “Utopia” is “Til Further Notice,” which features Blake.)
“He is a chameleon,” Göransson says of working with Scott. “You can’t really put your finger on what he’s doing. He can break out of every genre, any form. It feels like the past and the future at the same time.”
But Scott needed to see the movie first. “Travis was sitting right next to me, and during the Cyclops scene, he put his hoodie up over his head because I think he was kind of scared,” Göransson says with a laugh. “It was a great time watching the movie with him. He was very excited.”
According to Scott, Göransson had booked a session in the studio they could get to work right after the screening. There, he played what he’d been tinkering with for Scott and Nolan, with the bard’s lines from the film as placeholders in the mix. Then Scott began freestyling between the lines, delivering the ode to Odysseus promised by the nearly three-hour film.
“It’s connecting the writing from the movie to the song,” Scott says, thinking back to the session. “Now, I’m wearing my artist hat, explaining that feeling of the trials and the tribulations, trying to come back to the crib, trying to see Penelope, being stuck with Calypso eating lotus flowers for eight years. … We shot the video in Switzerland in a castle — it was crazy. It was insane.”
In the middle of this story about the recording session, Scott hops up to grab a piece of candy — a red Airhead stocked by the catering team. In that moment, I mention that there’s a crazy piece of trivia about the song: It’s Nolan’s first songwriting credit.