Jason Momoa’s probably best known these days for being the DCEU’s Aquaman, but when he got the call for Dune he couldn’t have been further away from the ocean. In an interview with IndieWire Momoa revealed he was actually up a mountain when his agent rang him to say Denis Villeneuve wanted to talk to him about Dune.
“I got a call from my agent literally on top of a mountain, and I was shocked, and he was like, ‘Denis Villeneuve wants to talk to you right now,'” Momoa explained. “I thought it was a prank. He said, ‘He wants to talk to you right now. He wants you for a role. He won’t tell anyone what it is.'”
Curious as to what Villeneuve wanted to talk to him about Momoa did what anyone in that situation would do, he “ran down the mountain”. “Me and my best friend, who loves Denis, ran down the mountain, into the room, FaceTimed him, and he had everything laid out,” Momoa said. “He had this whole department there in costume. Everyone was staring at me, and he had a whole book. It was this manifest. Pictures, everything. It was almost like he was pitching it to me, and I was taken aback. He asked if I would play Duncan. That’s never happened before.”
The casting process wasn’t the only thing different to anything Momoa had experienced before. He explained that his time on set was unlike any shoot he’d been on before. “We were all so close, I didn’t expect Oscar Isaac to be that amazing. So funny, talented, and charming,” Momoa said. “Brolin, I knew would be a stud. Javier is like a god to me. Timothée is so intelligent. Rebecca is amazing, she held her own against all of us.”
Similarly, the science fiction movie’s fight sequences were very different to anything Momoa had filmed for any action movie before. “We had to fight numerous people, so a lot of training went into that last battle scene,” he revealed.
If you love Spice and Sandworms be sure to check out our list of the best sci-fi series.