When Momoa became a Game Of Thrones phenomenon

“I really fell in love with the genre audience who consider these shows (Stargate:

Atlantis, which he starred in) to be such a big part of their lives,” he said of his first Comic Con. “It’s nice to talk to people who can relate.” He tapped into another phenomenon in 2011, when he was cast as the ruthless Khal Drogo on HBO’s Game

of Thrones. “I actually thought they were going to go with another actor,” he said. “A voice inside still said, ‘No one is going to take this from me. This is the biggest badass role, and it’s mine.’ Aside from my wife, the other thing I had to have was this role.

“I even said to my wife, ‘I want you, baby … and I want Drogo.’” Momoa got the role he still calls “so primal and primitive,” and with it a new challenge: to learn to speak a madeup language called Dothraki. “It was hard to learn the dialect, which includes a lot of grunting and breathing,” the actor admitted. “My first few episodes, I just had to say ‘no’ a few times. But I knew I had a big speech coming up on Episode 6. I was pooping in my pants, but I ordered some pizza and learned that language like it was a song.”

As with many Game of Thrones stars, however, his time on the show was limited. “When I read that I was going to die,” Momoa recalled, “I started screaming, ‘No! No way!’ I got in the car and actually drove to Barnes & Noble to check out the books and how I would die. I was in the bookstore and started screaming ‘Nooooooo!’ again. It was so brutal.

“Then I had to stop screaming and say, ‘That’s awesome.’”