I’ll basically use any excuse to post photos of Jason Momoa. I would love to post just random Instagrams from his account, but often there’s no real story there beyond “look at these pretty photos of Jason Momoa.” Which is too bad, because he’s actually an interesting guy and I would love it if we had a weekly Momoa post. Anyway, Jason has a feature in the latest issue of The Hollywood Reporter, and it’s surprisingly not about Justice League or Aquaman. He’s promoting the Netflix series Frontier, about the fur trade in the 18th century, although of course Momoa talks about that other stuff too. Incidentally… a TV show about the fur trade? Like, The Revenant only a TV show? You can read the full THR piece here. Some highlights:
He usually just takes what he’s offered: “I haven’t been an actor who’s been able to pick and choose roles, and being a family man, it’s been about putting food on the table,” says the 37-year-old, who has two children (Lola Iolani, 9, and Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha, 8) with his wife, actress Lisa Bonet. “This has been the best moment of my career because the superhero roles are letting me get the other roles I want.”
Game of Thrones didn’t help his career: “You get a lot of respect for Game of Thrones, and it was a lot of fun to play but it didn’t help my career a lot because Khal Drago doesn’t even speak English.”
Playing a rogue fur trader on Frontier: “He’s half Irish and half native, as am I, so it really resonated with me,” says Momoa, who was born in Hawaii and is of Native Hawaiian, German, Irish and Native American descent. “When you find out that he’s lost his family, when you pull back each layer, it was a beautiful place to go as an actor. I’ve never played anything like that before.”Playing Aquaman: “I knew I had the role in late 2012 or early 2013. I was trying to get any role I could, and not having much luck. So, knowing what your future is going to be in the next five or six years and having to keep your mouth shut is brutal.”
He really wants to do a comedy: “I would love to do comedy. I can’t wait to be in a tracksuit in an office space, not covered in blood — and with my clothes on.”
I like how honest he is about his career and that he talks about the bulk of his career just consisting of taking whatever job he could get. But I disagree with him about Game of Thrones – GoT took him to the next level, where he was getting into meetings and auditioning for better stuff. GoT raised his profile so significantly and he doesn’t understand that, which is weird.
Anyway, look at the pretty pictures.
Photos courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter.
Sigh, I’ll just be over here daydreaming for a bit. Thanks for posting this!!
I think GoT made him more NAME recognizable to the general public, but I’ll believe him that it didn’t really help his career from an industry perspective. He’s not a white man with a traditional Hollywood look. It’ll always be an uphill battle for roles, much less avoid being typecast as “the big, scary tanned guy.”
Well I can’t say I’ve seen him in anything of note so I wouldn’t say he’s lying.
*drool* He is just so damn beautiful. And I adore how he is so forthright and honest. Love love love him.
Love me some Jason too!
Wow, his children’s names are really interesting and unique….as are the children themselves having so much heritage from both parents.
I’m mixed/biracial. I hate comments like this. They’re so fetishizing. Makes you feel like a cocktail or petri dish rather than a human or individual.
LEE, I don’t know exactly what Cherrypie meant, but speaking as someone who is not only white, but whose ancestors came from neighboring European countries, it really IS interesting to hear Jason Mamoa is Hawaiian, Irish, Native American, and German. It just seems so much more exotic and interesting than a completely waspy heritage. Do observations like this offend you and others?
Why is it bad to ask these questions or to touch on to people’s varied heritage and background? It’s not fetishizing. It’s beautiful to be able to be proud of where you are from, where your parents are from. Where I live, people will tell you their ancestor’s stories 5 generations back on both sides of the family – with pride!
I have an inter-racial marriage and I would be disappointed in my biracial kid if he thought that being told that he is unique/interesting/has a lot of heritage made him feel like a petri dish/sub-human.
Their names are interesting, but must have been torture for the kids to remember how to spell
Don’t all children have exactly the same amount of heritage from both their parents? This is one of those well-meaning but hella awkward comments that people sometimes make.
I love the bad boys and not the cookie cutter pretty boys. Walking Dead Daryl is perfection. To the point, I don’t find anything about this dude attractive and hate him on GOT. I didn’t realize he was Lisa Bonet’s husband. He seems very concerned about finding jobs. Perhaps a new attitude would help, or acting lessons.
I don’t find him attractive either. Maybe I’m missing something that makes women drool at the sight or thought of him
I do not view him as a cookie-cutter pretty boy. He speaks his mind clearly, he’s been true to himself, and he just happens to have a look that many find interesting. My best friend sees him fairly regularly when he comes into Carhartt’s corporate headquarters (I think he’s one of their spokespersons). She has taken photos with him, he goofs around with the office staff (the plebes), and he speaks proudly of his wife and kids. He is as down to earth as a person could possibly be. That makes him more attractive to me.
I think that his GoT role gave him a TON of female fans, and this is important in the game (to have a fan base). When you have name recognition, it saves so much effort in marketing a product.
How marketable are his movies to women tho? (Especially since he´d like to keep his shirt on?)
CB again with this male beauty parade. Good lord. I don’t care if he starred in :Game of Monopoly” I’d be in.
Half Irish? * laughs* Not that I’d give a damn – hey the more the merrier – but this is Blake Lively territory in male form.
Yeah, and his instagram handle is @prideofgypsies. I suppose all the troublesome things he does/says (and there have been many) are easier to overlook than, say, Rob Schneider’s, because he’s cute to look at. *shrugs*
The g word is a racial slur where I’m from. Why does he have it as an instagram handle?
@Locke Lamora
Precisely. It’s not glamorous. It’s a slur. And it’s not an excuse to say “oh, it’s not a slur/doesnt have the same meaning in America’. Other, non American, celebs have been criticised harshly for using terms that are offensive in the US but not in their countries or languages: it’s a two way street and Americans are not exempt from learning.
+1 on the g word, it’s equivalent with the n word in my country.
@Arlene
Huh?
Wait, i don’t get what’s funny? All of a sudden you can’t be part or half Irish now? Why? Because he’s a person of color?
I’m confused at why anyone would laugh or scoff at a multiracial person, telling you what their background is?
Oh, and how is he like Blake Lively?! Blake Lively is a white woman, who identifies as white, and for the purposes of commerce (a cosmetic commerical) decided to share her lineage which she claims contains Native American.
Just don’t get how Jason just sharing what his ‘multi,’ is, like people do every day (I’m sure he can actually knows who the Irish is, and where it comes from) – is like Blake Lively in a commercial.
Because if you look at here- http://ethnicelebs.com/jason-momoa you can see for yourself he’s not ‘half Irish’, so that’s why I laughed. Nobody said a multi-racial person can’t be half Irish and indeed many are. Blake lively said she was part Irish too – but I imagine that’s something of a stretch- http://ethnicelebs.com/blake-lively
Have you seen his parents? His mother is a red headed white woman and his father is Hawaiian. How does that correlate to Blake “Plantation Belle” Lively pulling out her feather for a makeup commercial?
If anything, he’s more like Drake or Dwayne Johnson than “Plantation Belle”.
Okay, so, I wasn’t referring to Blake’s native American claim at all, but to her Irish claim.
This is an odd bone to pick…
What is English heritage? What is Irish heritage?
Someone whose family lived in that country for a period of time? Or something else?
The English, for example, are descended from loads of places – the Normans conquered over 1000 years ago. So the English are French? What about the Roman influence or the Vikings or the Celts? Who is actually from where? What is the threshold for getting to claim you are from somewhere?
Telling someone I am Australian gives them zero clue about my ethnicity/heritage. I could be literally any combination of races as it is a multicultural country. So I am not ‘allowed’ to say my heritage is half/quarter/whatever German/Polish/Argentinian/Scottish/Ugandan or whatever is correct if I or my parents didn’t live there? What am I allowed to say then?
Also, linking to random websites from people claiming to investigate celeb genealogy is shaky evidence at best.
I didn’t know he had children with Lisa Bonet.
GoT brought him to MY attention but not necessarily opened the flood gates to more jobs like it did with Emilia Clark.
I get what he means. It might have made him more of a household name, but it didn’t mean everyone came knocking on his door to offer him a role. I would love to see him in more stuff, because he seems like a really cool and fun dude (and of course, he’s nice to look at). I think he’d be successful in Jason Statham/Keanu Reeves type movies. I think he has a lot of female fans and a lot of sci-fi/fantasy fans, and I think it’d work.
Without GoT, most people wouldn’t have had any idea the guy existed. He didn’t speak a recognizable language but that role let him flex his pecs.
Too bad he’s dismissive of the job.
I’ve always been a big fan of his. He’s not my normal type at all, but he seems like a kind soul, and his sexiest asset is that huge genuine smile I see in so many pictures. And that twinkle in his eyes! This man loves life.
It’s funny that he dreams of playing a role where he keeps his clothes on. I forget that men can feel objectified, too.
Your first paragraph is correct.
He certainly is dismissive of what made him popular. Wow.
I guess he’s blaming the non-English speaking role on why he wasn’t getting many offers at the time. Not the “joke” that he made about “getting to rape beautiful women” at the Con or whatever it was.
No, it certainly couldn’t have tarnished him that he said such a horrible thing!
GOT brought him into our living rooms, but he did some SyFy stuff I thought too. Drago definitely helped his career but he’s not being disrespectful. He is a kind, genuine soul. Not into the Hollywood stuff, just happy he can provide. Which is commendable.
I don’t think I expected this much vitriol in this post. I also don’t think he’s said anything offensive or trashing his former employer. He explains it well.
Some people find The Rock attractive. I don’t and that’s fine. Momoa sounds like a kind man and something about him being so big and muscular but gentle is super sexy to me. (I also have a thing for Samoans because they are huge but often very gentle and happy.)
Jason’s got the IT factor and Khal Drogo got my attention.
I’ve liked him since Stargate: Atlantis. My husband loves sf tv and movies. The show was alright, maybe a bit boring, but then Ronon showed up and the show got way more interesting!
Frontier is a good show, but be warned – he’s only in 2 or 3 episodes, not every one. ☹️ Nothing wrong with a history of NA show. It’s not an era that gets much attention (compare it to Tudor or Victorian England) so it’s all good.
He’s just beautiful !! I would watch him in anything . Yes a comedy would be good .He seems to be goofy.:O. 😂
Thank you for the pics. Gorgeous hunk of a man.
Lisa Bonet certainly shows what not ‘settling’ can look like…
I agree on the weekly Jason Momoa!
I just realized that he is Zoey Kravitz step-dad!
Wow… Always liked Lisa Bonet. They are both just super gorgeous human beings. I bet there kids will grow up very beautiful, too.
About GoT, I think he means that while it did make him better known, it didn’t really showcase his acting skills so he probably didn’t get offers of meaty roles. Which is true, I mean, everyone talks about Jason Momoa and Khal Drogo, but he hasn’t done anything great (yet). Frontier is pretty bad.