The role that taught Jason Momoa everything he needed to know: “Day in, day out”
When talking about Game of Thrones, a few names come up time and time again, such as Emilia Clarke, Sophie Turner, Gwendoline Christie, and more, who managed to translate their time in Westeros into successful movie careers, but in terms of the franchise’s biggest stars, it’s hard not to pick Jason Momoa.
He might have only appeared in the show’s first two seasons and barely said a word, but Momoa’s turn as Dothraki leader Khal Drogo led to some very big things. The same year that Game of Thrones premiered, the Hawaiian star was chosen to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger in a rebooted version of Conan the Barbarian, which didn’t go so well, but it did put him on the map.
In 2016, he made his first appearance as Aquaman, and since then, he’s been an undisputed megastar and one of the most famous people on the planet; although, it probably helps that nobody else on said planet looks like him.
Before he ever laid eyes on his Khaleesi, Momoa was well-acquainted with TV land, his first break coming in through Baywatch: Hawaii, where he starred in for 38 episodes. He was given another leading role in a Hawaiian soap opera North Shore, before taking on the part of Ronon Dex in the sci-fi series, Stargate Atlantis, about which he recalled in an interview with Esquire, and how much it taught him about show business as a whole.
“It was where I learned how to shoot, how to write, how to do it all,” he explained, “We made 22 episodes in nine months. Day in, day out. The machine”.
Inspired by the 1994 Roland Emmerich movie (which almost made Kurt Russell quit acting forever), Stargate Atlantis is technically a spin-off of the franchise’s first TV show, Stargate SG-1. His character, Dex, is a human living on a far-off colony world who joins the main cast in the second season, when he is rescued from an evil alien species known as the Wraith.
Momoa would then stick around for the rest of the show’s lifetime, appearing in over 70 episodes and taking part in some of the series’ biggest moments, even getting killed at one point, only to be revived in true sci-fi fashion.
The majority of Atlantis was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, which is where Momoa, who was 27 at the time, was living. He might have had a regular gig on TV back when that really meant something, but it was hardly the high life as he was living in a crappy studio apartment to be close enough to the studio; he found the work gruelling, but it obviously paid off in the long run.
Everyone has to start somewhere, and Momoa couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to the business. He didn’t go to film school or study acting, so working on Stargate Atlantis was a proper crash course, and once again, he was the biggest star to come out of that show by far.
