Wild, fast ride
Jason Momoa pushes himself to the extreme, again, in his dream job
As much as Jason Momoa might have a deep love of Australia and its people, there are certain things he can’t bring himself to do. The hulking Hawaiianborn star of Game Of Thrones and Dune has spent a lot of time living, working and travelling Down Under – firstly when he dated Mcleod’s Daughters star Simmone Mackinnon for seven years, then when he played the title role in Gold Coast-shot superhero hit Aquaman.
But when he was photographed in Sydney wearing an All Blacks shirt last year en route to New Zealand, where he is filming historical drama Chief of War, it raised the question of where his allegiance might lie when the Bledisloe Cup rolls around.
Given his Polynesian heritage – the new project he is creating for Apple TV+ is about the unification of Hawaii – and the Instagram pics he posted on the weekend hanging out with Taika Waititi, Cliff Curtis and former All Black captain Tana Umaga, Momoa says it’s a no-brainer who he’s for and who he’s against in trans-tasman sporting contests.
“I have always been against you,” he says with a laugh over Zoom from the Land of the Long White Cloud. “These are my cousins – I mean Maori and Kanaka Maoli (Indigenous Hawaiians) – we are one and the same. They are just the smaller version of Hawaiians.”
Despite that, Momoa says he was “bummed” that filming for the coming Aquaman sequel was based out of the UK rather than Australia. London, he says, is no Gold Coast, but for someone who was raised in the American Midwest, quite frankly, he’s happy to be anywhere.
“I am pretty spoiled, bro,” he says. “I mean, shit, I have been shooting in Rome, I am in New Zealand right now and I love it down here. So, the world is beautiful. I grew up in Iowa, so I can have fun in a closet.”
Fun was top of mind for Momoa in his new role as the chief bad guy in
Fast X, the penultimate (probably) chapter in the long-running, highoctane, critic-proof Fast and Furious franchise. Sporting nail-polish and a flamboyantly metrosexual wardrobe and driving a lavender-coloured
Chevy Impala muscle car, Momoa confirms that he had an absolute blast playing the vengeful, gender-fluid, batshit crazy Dante Reyes in the $500m blockbuster filmed in Rome, London, Turin, Lisbon and Los Angeles.
“They let me loose and I knew it was going to be wild and very creative and they let me play with my imagination as much as possible and I was completely supported by an amazing director,” he says. “It was a f--king dream job, man.”
Momoa’s role as an agent of complete chaos on a mission to take down Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto – his polar opposite and the man he holds responsible for the death of his drug lord father in the fifth film in the franchise – has already drawn praise for an anarchic energy akin to The Joker from the Batman world.
Momoa credits director Louis Leterrier for Dante’s over-the-top appeal, saying that every time he thought he was going too far, the French director of The Incredible Hulk and Clash of the Titans urged him to go bigger and more extreme.
“I would actually stop doing things and edit myself, going, ‘That’s a bit much – take it easy, Jase.’ And he’d be like, ‘No, no, no, Jason – you didn’t do that thing where you were going to dance – do that!’ So, he pushed further and further and wanted more.”
Momoa says he was inspired by the rock’n’roll attitude of Guns N’ Roses guitar god Slash when preparing to play Aquaman. For Reyes, he looked to the animal kingdom, specifically the show pony of the bird world.
“He’s very like a peacock,” he says. “I like to use animals because I don’t get to study humans as much as I would like. They see me looking at them.”
An ardent engine enthusiast, Momoa felt right at home in the Fast and Furious world, where the car chases get crazier with each film (they literally went into space in Fast 9) and the laws of physics have long ceased to apply. While he’s hoping to get some more intense driver training for the next film – it’s no spoiler to say that Fast X ends on the mother of all cliffhangers – he’s happy to leave the most extreme physical and vehicle stunts to his two Aussie stuntmen Kim Fardy and Ryan Tarran, and veteran American motorbike expert Joe Bucaro.
“There are certain things you just can’t do,” he says. “I’m not going to risk the whole show, so there were definitely some motorcycle stunts that Joe did. And then Kim will do something – that’s not me getting thrown into a car over and over, that’s my boy Kim Fardy – the Aussie is taking some hits for the team.”
Momoa is tight-lipped on details of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, due for release in December, but says that despite recent changes at DC Studios and its shared universe of superheroes, he hopes he gets to swing the trident and command the fishes as King of Atlantis for many years to come.
“It comes down to the fans and whether they love it,” he says. “There’s a lot of humour in it and a lot of soul. And the cool thing is it really focuses on what’s happening to our planet and climate change. We get to see the threats and what’s possible. That’s all I can say – you’re going to have a good time, you’re going to laugh and I hope I get to play him ’til I am old, old, old.”