The Turner & Momoa Place

Jason Momoa Talks Road to Paloma, Aquaman Shockya on July 23rd 2014

Jason Momoa has made a name for himself on both the small screen and the big, in projects like “Stargate: Atlantis,” “Game of Thrones” and ”Conan the Barbarian” — mostly via his brooding physicality. “Road to Paloma,” though, finds the actor branching out, by degrees. Co-written with Robert Homer Mollohan, Momoa’s dusty, Southwestern-set directorial debut is a road movie/crime flick/wanderlust mash-up, centering on Wolf (Momoa), a Native American biker who finds himself living on the lam after avenging his mother’s rape and murder. For ShockYa, Brent Simon recently had a chance to speak to Momoa one-on-one, about how he enjoyed juggled duties behind and in front of the camera, filming a sex scene with his wife, and those rumors of him being cast as Aquaman in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

Get to know the new Aquaman with our Jason Momoa movies spotlight

For far too long, DC Comics’ king of the seven seas has been a running joke among casual comic fans. The modern version of Aquaman has done a lot to dispel the older misconceptions about his character, but next month, fans will get their first glimpse of a truly fearsome version of the character as played by Jason Momoa in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

The Jason Momoa movies and TV list doesn’t just include one of DC’s iconic heroes. 18 years as a professional actor, Momoa has also played Conan the Barbarian, Khal Drogo on Game of Thrones, and Ronon Dex on Stargate Atlantis, which should be more than enough to keep him busy on the comic book convention circuit for the next few decades. Nor has Momoa simply been content to be an actor. In 2014, he directed and co-wrote the feature film, Road to Paloma.

Momoa hasn’t quite broken out as a full-fledged movie star yet. However, there are quite a few Jason Momoa movies coming up, including The Bad Batch, Going Under, Braven, and of course, the Aquaman solo film.

Ahead of Batman v Superman’s release on March 25, ComingSoon.net is looking back at the 10 most memorable roles from Jason Momoa movies and television shows to date. And by the time he’s done, the Aquaman jokes may finally become a distant memory!

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: Baywatch Hawaii (1999)

Momoa made his acting debut in the final two seasons of Baywatch. But this was when Baywatch was semi-rebooted as Baywatch Hawaii. Momoa portrayed Jason Ioane, the brash 19-year-old lifeguard among the new crew. Jason Ioane even had his own character arc throughout the show as he became more familiar with his Hawaiian heritage before fully embracing it.

As one of the more popular characters on Baywatch Hawaii, Momoa reprised his role for the TV reunion movie, Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding in 2003.

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: North Shore (2004)

After Baywatch was behind him, Momoa’s next break came on the Fox drama, North Shore. Although, “prime time soap opera” is probably a better way to describe North Shore, which focused on the staff of Grand Waimea Hotel and Resort on Oahu’s North Shore in Hawaii.

Momoa played a supporting character named Frankie Seau, who worked as a bartender at the hotel. Seau eventually had a relationship with Amanda Righetti’s Tessa Lewis, a semi-reformed con artist who worked as the Assistant Concierge at the hotel. You probably don’t remember this show because it only ran for a single season on Fox.

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: Stargate Atlantis (2005)

Among sci-fi fans, Momoa first got noticed as Ronon Dex on Stargate Atlantis. Momoa’s character was added to the series during the second season and he quickly became a fan favorite. Within the universe of the show, Ronon was a Satedan native in the Pegasus Galaxy who was relentlessly pursued by the alien Wraith before he befriended the Atlantis expedition and became one of their most valued teammates. Momoa stayed with the series through the end of its five season run.

It was this role that led fans to actively push Momoa for his critical part in Game of Thrones.

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: Game of Thrones (2011)

The producers of HBO‘s Game of Thrones have said that the fan campaign to get Momoa on their show is what eventually led to them him. During the first season, Momoa portrayed Khal Drogo, the fearsome Dothraki warlord who married Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). While Daenerys was originally Drogo’s unwilling bride, she eventually won his heart and his total devotion. But by the time that Daenerys was truly a Khaleesi, Drogo was felled by a festering wound and not even blood magic could restore him.

Momoa briefly reprised his role in the second season finale during a dream sequence that reunited Drogo with Daenerys.

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: Conan the Barbarian (2011)

In theory, Conan the Barbarian should have been Momoa’s breakout feature film, as he stepped into the role of Robert E. Howard’s famous hero. This was also the first Conan movie since Arnold Schwarzenegger’s two appearances as the character in the ‘80s.

And yet, this version of Conan the Barbarian was an epic bomb that didn’t even get $50 million worldwide. That’s one of the reasons that there was never a sequel to this film, and Schwarzenegger may reprise his role for Conan the Conqueror in a few years.

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: The Red Road (2014)

Momoa made his return to television in SundanceTV’s The Red Road as Phillip Kopus, a dangerous member of the Ramapough Mountain people who often came in conflict with Martin Henderson’s Harold Jensen, a police officer in Walpole, New Jersey.

The Red Road had two six-episode seasons before it was cancelled last year.

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: Road To Paloma (2014)

Road to Paloma was Momoa’s passion project. He co-wrote the script, directed the film, and starred as Robert Wolf, a Native American on the run from the law after killing the man who raped his mother. In the aftermath of his mother’s death, Wolf attempted to travel north to spread her ashes while the FBI and other law enforcement officials hunted him down.

While Road to Paloma only received a limited theatrical release, it’s reviews were generally favorable.

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: Wolves (2014)

Momoa’s next movie was Wolves, in which he played a werewolf named Connor Slaughter who unknowingly sired Cayden Richards (Lucas Till), a young werewolf who was manipulated into believing that Connor raped his mother.

Wolves was another box office bomb, and it managed to make even less money than Road to Paloma. It was also negatively received by film critics and audiences.

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

So far, very little is known about how Momoa’s Aquaman will be used in Batman v Superman, since the movie is primarily about the conflict between Henry Cavill’s Clark Kent/Superman and Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne/Superman. But there are rumors that Aquaman made a stealth appearance in Man of Steel when Superman was saved by whales.

Jason Momoa Movies and TV Spotlight: Aquaman (2018)

The long-awaited Aquaman movie is only two years away, if everything goes to plan. Momoa will headline the film as the title character, and Amber Heard is currently in talks to play Aquaman’s partner/lover/and later wife, Mera. James Wan will direct Aquaman and the film will be written by David Leslie Johnson. Aquaman doesn’t currently have a confirmed start date, though it is targeting a July 27, 2018 release.

The production office

You just spoon feed these people: This is what it looks like

I wanted people to see it and say ‘Wow that looks amazing’… Yeah that just cost beer and gas. Drive out there, and shoot this and drink some beer and drive home. Wait ‘til – obviously – sober.

Boss Media Frank Mancuso and Eric Gores saved my ass. Sarah Shahi - we met on Bullet to the Head - she introduced me to them. This is all about people you know, it’s helpful. You’re going to have all kinds of friends and they’re going to be in all the right places, just be cool. It’ll happen when it happens.

We took the movie to them and said it would take us 250K to shoot this and get it in the can. They said: ‘We’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars, you shoot half the movie, we don’t like it, you owe us hundred thousand dollars with no interest.’ This doesn’t happen..

I said fuck yeah. I called six of my best friends. I got a buddy who didn’t know how to do sound, he was an actor. We bought all the equipment, we loaded it up in my Airstream, loaded up the truck. We went and lived in the dirt and shot half of it, all the hard stuff we shot. Came back, edited it within a week and a half; gave it to them. They loved it; gave us the rest.

That’s unheard of. It took forty days to shoot it, but realistically it’s over the course of three months because I had to shoot half the movie, edit it, present it, go back out there again.

Road to Paloma

Road to Paloma

#Repost @prideofgypsies ・・・ Dream job. Directing @carhartt

What Momoa is really trying to do is make a career for himself beyond acting, where he’s usually typecast in the way that’s lead so many action stars to become a parody of themselves. He wants to establish himself as a legitimate filmmaker, too. While directing a few TV commercials will hardly turn anyone into Orson Welles, Momoa views his Carhartt collaborations as something of an apprenticeship.

His own Citizen Kane is already in the works, and he needs to be ready.

Later that afternoon, I sit in a sparsely furnished RV with Momoa, drinking Guinness and trying to thaw my fingers. He explains that the violent scenes he’s been known to play a starring role in are not necessarily reflective of his personal taste: I was raised by a single mother in Iowa. We weren’t watching orgies with guys getting their heads lopped off. I was watching Rear Window and Gone With the Wind.

Somehow, it’s not easy to picture the six-foot-four Momoa—who is wearing a “Carhartt Beer Society” hoodie and whose face bears a scar from an unfortunate collision with a pint glass a few years back—smitten with Scarlett O’Hara. Those familiar with Momoa’s career will know his reputation for playing the kind of characters you wouldn’t want to get in a fight with or have on your team in a spelling bee. Before he was Khal Drogo, Momoa landed the lead in Conan the Barbarian, a 2011 remake of the early ‘80s Schwarzenegger gore fest. “I’m just in this larger-sized body and people kind of hire me to do that,” Momoa says. “That” refers to scenes of extreme ass-kicking, whether it’s the part in Game of Thrones where he rips out someone’s tongue, or the denouement of #BulletToTheHead, in which his character tries to annihilate #SylvesterStallone with an axe before (spoiler alert) taking a bullet to the head.

Such roles never quite did it for Momoa, who, at 36, harbors loftier artistic aspirations that his cinematic resume might imply. “I just kept getting called in for these action movies,” Momoa says. “One-liner, guy doesn’t say much, shoots a bunch of shit. I was like, ‘That ain’t me.’” Like his mother, he is a painter, with two shows to his credit. In the brief time that I spend with him, he references Caravaggio’s work and compares Detroit’s current bohemian vibe to what once drew aspiring artists to Berlin. Momoa also credits his mom for another lifelong passion: climbing. He’s been hooked since she took him rock climbing in South Dakota one summer when he was a teenager, and he’s talked about plans to open his own climbing gym.

In an effort to do projects that were more “him,” Momoa started his own production company, Pride of Gypsies, in 2010. In July 2014, the company released its first feature length film, Road to Paloma, about a man who avenges his mother’s death and then goes on the lam, with her ashes in tow.

That night, the crew gets together for sushi in St. John’s, Newfoundland’s capital. Snow is forecast for tomorrow, and there’s hope that today’s trench scene will look even better when re-shot with everything coated white.

Momoa has had a few more beers since our conversation in the trailer. I don’t see exactly what happens—so I don’t know whether it’s intentional or just a consequence of his hugeness—but suddenly a there’s a broken chair on the floor in Momoa’s immediate vicinity. We inform the waitress, and it becomes immediately obvious that this isn’t the first time the Pride of Gypsies crew has eaten here. “Why am I not surprised?” she asks.

Among those seated at the table is Utah-based master alpinist and Hollywood trainer Mark Twight, who’s getting Momoa in shape for his upcoming role as Aquaman. (As a climbing fanatic, Momoa has been a Twight fan for years.) Twight says that as long as he can keep Momoa’s daily beer consumption in the single digits, they should be okay. I don’t know if he’s being facetious.

I ask Momoa how he feels about such big-budget Hollywood roles that outfit him with celebrity personal trainers, versus smaller more intimate projects, like a Carhartt shoot in the tiny easternmost town in North America. He says that he’s grateful for the financial cushion of the big movies, but even if the money weren’t there, he’d still be doing the things he wants to do.

As soon as he’s done being Aquaman, Momoa says, he will get his crew together to make his magnum opus: a period piece set in late-19th-century Hawaii. Momoa, whose father is of native Hawaiian descent, was born in Honolulu and remains very connected to his early home. He’s been an outspoken critic of the ongoing Thirty Meter Telescope project, which proposes to build a giant telescope atop the Big Island’s Mauna Kea volcano, a site considered sacred by many natives. His upcoming epic is Momoa’s way of showing more support for indigenous Hawaiians: the film will tell the story of Ko’olau and Pi’ilani, two lovers whose world came undone with the U.S. annexation of the islands.

It’s a project that’s been five years in the making. Momoa, who’s been frustrated in the past by a lack of creative control over the films he’s been involved in, says he hopes to be fully responsible for every aspect of the film, “like a painting or a song.” “I want to be able to say, ‘These are the people I hired, this is what I set out to make.’ And it’s hard to get it distributed the way that you want it to, but I want to fight for that until I get that movie where it’s like, this is my Braveheart,” Momoa says. “At some point when I’ve done enough, I can say: This is the one.