Jason Momoa Prefers to Be Called a ‘Sensitive Alpha Male’Jason Momoa Prefers to Be Called a ‘Sensitive Alpha Male’

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/arts/television/jason-momoa-chief-of-war.html

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You will want to know what it feels like to be pulled by the strong hands of Jason Momoa from the cyan waters of the Pacific and then to flop, into the belly of a canoe, like some recently netted fish. It feels, I can tell you, wonderful.

This was on a paradisiacal morning in mid-July, just off the Western coast of Oahu. From the wing of a bright orange outrigger canoe, Momoa, casual in a sleeveless shirt and striped pants, like a god on holiday, pointed out the beach where he had learned to surf, the reef where his umbilical cord is buried. His father, Joseph Momoa, lay beside him, cradling an enormous conch shell.

“Aloha, what’s up, my boy?” Joseph said.

“What’s up, Pops?” his son answered as the canoe sped through the water. “This is awesome.” In mellow moments like these, I could almost forget the primal horror of sitting in a swimsuit next to a man who often tops most-handsome lists. A waterman in the canoe’s stern gestured toward a cove famous for Galápagos sharks, and then suggested we take a dip. Most days, I avoid shark-infested seas. But Momoa, 45, seemed unconcerned. I jumped in.

Built like a boulder, if boulders had bedroom eyes and smelled of musk and adventure, Momoa is a bruiser with a difference. Though undeniably an action star — he has played an alien, a barbarian, a warlord in “Game of Thrones,” a swordmaster in the “Dune” movies, a superhero who could absolutely crush a freestyle relay in “Aquaman” — he pairs hypermasculinity with surprising sweetness.

“The thing that makes him an interesting actor is his enormous heart and empathy — all in the body of a Trojan god,” Emilia Clarke, who played his bride on the HBO megahit “Game of Thrones,” would later tell me in an email. (Asked about the first time they met, Clarke wrote: “I remember it vividly! He wrestled me to the ground in the foyer of the Fitzwilliam Hotel in Belfast screaming ‘WIFEY!!!’”)