November
11
2020
Press: Jason Momoa Will Save Us All

With his artistic spirit, brawny physicality, and a pink scrunchie or two, the actor is the leading man we need.

INSTYLE – On the morning of my interview with Jason Momoa in Los Angeles, I’m jolted awake in the predawn hours by one of the strongest earthquakes to hit the city in years. Later in the day a nasty brush fire breaks out near the house in Laurel Canyon where Momoa and I are set to meet, so on my way there I’m rerouted because a trio of fire trucks is blocking the main road.

If the apocalypse is slated for this very day, as it very well may be, then it’s hard to think of anyone handier to have around than Jason Momoa. Onscreen, the hulking 6-foot-4 actor has been all kinds of hard-core warriors and superheroes, and in the upcoming sci-fi epic Dune, he helps secure a hostile planet for his master, Timothée Chalamet. Surely I can count on him to protect me from any natural disasters that might occur in the Hollywood Hills.

 

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Yet it’s not entirely surprising when Momoa greets me in a pair of flowy pink-and-red-striped pants that he had custom-made from a set of French linens. Or when he tells me he recently started seeing a therapist and is exploring issues of male vulnerability. Momoa, you see, is many dudes in one. Part soulful surfer, part brawny he-man, part committed activist, and part class clown, he spent the quarantine painting and writing and teaching his 13-year-old daughter how to throw a tomahawk. Certainly he’s the only guy I’ve met who can build his own motorcycle and ride it to a film première dressed in head-to-toe pink. When I ask him why he’s so fond of pink scrunchies (today he’s wearing two — one in his hair and one on his wrist), he smiles and shrugs.

“Pink is just a beautiful color,” he says. “And I’m pretty secure in my masculinity. I don’t really give a shit what anyone thinks.”

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October
12
2020
Press: Game of Thrones Cast Speaks Out on Early Sex Scenes ‘It Was Supposed To Be a Closed Set’

SYFY – HBO’s Game of Thrones wasn’t your average fantasy epic. It was grim, dirty, violent, and sexual. In fact, it had such frequent and graphic nudity that it helped coin the phrase “sexposition” when referring to plot exposition being doled out by a nude character. But according to a new book, the experiences of the cast in these intimate scenes left plenty to be desired — especially in the hit show’s early, scrappy days.

James Hibberd’s new oral history Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series digs into this plenty, including interviews with everyone from Khal Drogo’s Jason Momoa to Cersei’s body double, Rebecca Van Cleave. Few were complementary to the series’ handling of its sex scenes, most of which took place long before HBO mandated hiring intimacy coordinators for all its shows in 2018.

Momoa took first-time showrunners D. B. Weiss and David Benioff’s unprofessional handling of the situations in stride, though he needed to sometimes refuse their requests. Momoa recalled a time while shooting a Season 1 sex scene when he placed the intimacy pouch (which covers an actor’s genitals in nude scenes) in Benioff’s hand: “That was because David had been like, ‘Momoa, just take it off!’ You know, giving me s***. ‘Sacrifice! Do it for your art!’ I’m just like, ‘F*** you, bro. My wife would be pissed. That’s for one lady only, man.'”

Momoa added: “So afterward I ripped the thing off and kept it in my hand and gave him a big hug and a handshake and was like, ‘Hey, now you have a little bit of me on you, buddy.'”

His scene partner, Daenerys Targaryen actress Emilia Clarke, has spoken at length about her uncomfortable experiences doing nudity on the show. “Because Jason had experience — he was an experienced actor who had done a bunch of stuff before coming on to this — he was like, ‘Sweetie, this is how it’s meant to be, this is how it’s not meant to be, and I’m going to make sure that that’s the f***ing gaze,’ Clarke said on the podcast Armchair Expert. “He was always like, ‘Can we get her a f***ing robe? She’s shivering!’ … He was so kind and considerate and cared about me as a human being.”

“I was so desperate to be the most professional actor I could be that I’d be like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ for anything they threw at me,” Clarke said in Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon. “I’ll just cry about it in the bathroom later, whatever, you won’t know.”

The actress, who appeared fully nude in sex scenes and when Daenerys is “reborn” in fire alongside her dragons, spoke about the pressures of being an actress fresh from drama school on that set. “Those were tough days,” she said of the first season, adding, “I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like, ‘No, the sheet stays up.’”

Misleading promises from production reportedly ranged from people sneaking onto a closed set to a supposedly closed set being thrown wide open. Hodor actor Kristian Nairn remembered during his Season 1 nude scene (“probably the most traumatic day of my life,” he previously said), when a prosthetic was worn because there was a child in the scene. Alas, things did not go as planned.

“I was s*** scared, but I did it because of the whole body-positive thing — Game of Thrones has a lot of people of different shapes and sizes, probably more than any other show ever,” Nairn said. “It was a very busy day on set, which was the opposite of what they told me. I’ve never seen a busier set!”

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October
12
2020
Press: One of the Most Memorable Fights in Game of Thrones Was Dreamed Up By Jason Momoa

SYFY – Jason Momoa’s intimidating Khal Drogo helped make Game of Thrones’ first season stick, and was a breakout character for the actor. But his role opposite Daenerys would’ve lacked a character-solidifying fight scene if Momoa hadn’t spoken up to showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.

Revealed in James Hibberd’s new oral history, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series, the killer, messy, gory, showdown between Drogo and fellow Dothraki rider Mago wasn’t just missing from George R.R. Martin’s original novel, it wasn’t even in the HBO script for “The Pointy End.”

If you’ll recall the Season 1 episode, after Mago disrespects the khaleesi, Drogo’s ready to throw down. And apparently it was all Momoa’s idea. “I told David and Dan one thing missing in the book for me was to see Drogo fight,” Momoa said. The whole buildup and the myth of him is amazing, and George is phenomenal. But I want to see him f**k s**t up. That’s why I did the haka in the audition, so you could just see what it would be like if he went into battle. I said, ‘I can make this simple. I can just bob and weave and then we see his quickness.'”

“Jason had a high batting average of ideas he’d come to us [with] that we liked and ended up using,” said Benioff. “And one thing he said fairly early on was, ‘I’m supposed to be the baddest man on the planet, I got this long braid because I’ve never lost a fight, and everybody is afraid of me. But nobody sees me fight, and isn’t that kind of lame?’ We told him, ‘No, it’s good, you’re so badass you don’t have to prove yourself. You’re the victor of a thousand battles, Jason, go back to your trailer.’ But there was something kind of strange with not getting to see this guy do what he does best.”

So came the quick-and-dirty fight, ending with Mago getting his tongue ripped out. This too came from Momoa: “Then I had a dream where somebody dumped on my wife and I ripped his tongue out through his throat.”

“Jason said, ‘I don’t think I should chop his head off; we’ve chopped off so many people’s heads. I think I should cut his throat open and pull his tongue out through his throat,'” said episode director Daniel Minahan. “I’m like, ‘Okay, let me get a tongue made.'”

The result was a quintessential Game of Thrones fight where the violence was inventive and gross, and the aftereffects (a scratch becomes infected and ultimately leads to the death of Drogo) were unanticipated. And it could’ve not happened at all.

Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon is out in bookstores now.

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October
12
2020
Press: The Best Part of SNL’s “Enough Is Enough” Skit Was Jason Momoa’s Hilarious Cameo

POP SUGAR – Saturday Night Live included a very special guest star this week: Jason Momoa. During the Oct. 10 episode, the Aquaman actor made a quick cameo in the “Enough Is Enough” skit. In the video, Beck Bennett plays an actor who posts an Instagram video criticizing President Donald Trump, which quickly goes viral for the wrong reasons. We then see Bennett have multiple conversations with his friends who promptly tell him to take down the video. Of course, the funniest moment is at the end of the skit, when he receives a FaceTime from Momoa himself, who also tells him to take down the video and untag him from the post. Watch the full skit above for Momoa’s brief but funny cameo.

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September
12
2020
Press: One Dune Scene Left Jason Momoa Weeping Like a Baby

Dune star Jason Momoa reveals that one particular scene in the sci-fi epic left him a broken man.

MOVIEWEB – Known for axe-throwing, beer-swilling, and generally being a giant, chiselled, chunk of masculinity, no one is going to accuse Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa of being soft. Not to his face, anyway. Of course, even a man built like Momoa is prone to an emotional outburst occasionally, and that is exactly what happened when the actor filmed a particular scene for the upcoming sci-fi epic, Dune.

There were moments where, you know, you don’t want to bitch. And it was funny because Denis — I’ve never run this much in my life, and Denis had me run across the desert, because the sun was setting and so we had to get the shot and I had to run through this windstorm. I had to run to Timothee [Chalamet]. I couldn’t see where I was going. All I wanted to, I just didn’t want to fall on my face and I didn’t want to disappoint [Denis Villeneuve]. I’m not the best runner, but I was like, ‘I’m not giving up.’ The amount of chaffing, and the sweat that had built up. But I was like, ‘I’m not gonna give up. I’m not going to give up!’ But inside, I was crying like a little baby.”

So, while his tears may have been on the inside, that does not make them any less real. It seems that it was not the emotional content of the scene that came close to breaking Momoa’s hard, outer shell, instead it was the sheer physicality. It is hard to imagine any kind of physical activity being a strain to Jason Momoa, but director Denis Villeneuve clearly found the behemoth actor’s breaking point.

Momoa’s is playing the superbly named, Duncan Idaho, the sword master of House Atreides and one of lead character Paul Atreides’ mentors. Momoa has previously revealed a few details about the role of Duncan Idaho, comparing him to a certain Scruffy-looking Nerfherder. “It’s a pretty massive film and I get to be this little-he’s kind of the Han Solo-esque of the group,” Momoa said of his character. “He’s kind of the rogue warrior who protects Timothée Chalamet and he serves Oscar Isaac.”

Dune has been described as a mythic and emotionally charged hero’s journey, and tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence-a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential-only those who can conquer their fear will survive.

Dune has amassed a hugely impressive cast alongside Jason Momoa that includes Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, and Javier Bardem. Dune is directed by Blade Runner 2049 and [Arrival’s} Denis Villeneuve who is working from a screenplay by Jon Spaihts, Villeneuve, and Eric Roth.

Dune is currently scheduled for release on December 18, 2020, though this could reportedly be postponed due to the ongoing global circumstances. This comes to us from Cinemanblend.

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