Christopher Nolan has explained why he doesn’t let his actors wear “big fluffy comfy slippers” on his film sets.

The Odyssey director, who has also famously banned mobile phones from his sets, explained on CBS Mornings that he doesn’t like his actors arriving on set in Ugg boots because they take everyone out of the reality of the scene they’re about to shoot.

“Sometimes actors will turn up, because the (character’s) footwear hurts them, so they’ll turn up in these big fluffy comfy slippers,” he told host Gayle King. “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.”

The Oscar-winning director noted that Ugg boots are similar to a person eating a bag of crisps off-camera.

“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 continued. “I want to stay in the moment; we want the actors to stay in the moment. And so for me, the Ugg boots are a signifier of modernity, absurd though that is.”

Anne Hathaway, who has worked with Nolan on The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar and The Odyssey, pointed out his issue with Uggs in an interview earlier this month.

“I did show up one day with Uggs, and he looked down and went, ‘Nope,'” Hathaway told USA Today with a laugh. “I just went, ‘No problem!’ And they never came back.”

Her Odyssey co-star Matt Damon added, “He hates Uggs more than anything.”

Emily Blunt, who starred in his 2023 movie Oppenheimer, previously shared that the British director has “a serious problem” with the comfortable shoes.

“I walked in wearing them one day, and it was like The Devil Wears Prada. He literally just stared at them. I was like, ‘Chris, come on.’ He goes, ‘Take those off,'” she recalled on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2024.

The Odyssey is now showing in cinemas.

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