Jason Momoa Bloopers That'll Make You Love Him Even More

Jason Momoa has long been a force of nature, due to his massive size, fierce athleticism and skill for intense scowls, on the backs of which he has built a reputation playing serious, savage warriors. 

From Khal Drogo to Declan Harp to Baba Voss, you could be forgiven for thinking of him as a brooding, bloodthirsty meathead. But as "Dune" character Duncan Idaho, he subverted expectations with true compassion; as Aquaman, he mixed lighthearted playfulness with some serious butt-kicking. 

Offscreen, Momoa has a down-to-earth, larger-than-life love of pranks, good lines and comic timing. Which is why his fans love his unguarded moments; some unrehearsed goofiness has even yielded popular memes. Below are some of the best "bloopers" Momoa has given them on film and TV sets. Whether it's witty banter between takes or a planned prank, such moments show a man in love with life, with a trickster god's sense of humor and a laugh that could win over the hardest cynic.

In "Game of Thrones," pretty much everybody (in some cases, controversially) got naked at some point. Most of the lead actors had a heavy nude scene, and some get quite a few. The warlord Khal Drogo (Momoa) was no different, in a scene where he was to take his new bride forcefully. 

Bedding Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), the scene is intense and quite serious. Clearly, Momoa had a desire to lighten the mood and keep his co-star loose. When it came time to make the choice of a genital guard, apparently Momoa decided to purchase his own. 

"I decided to have some fun with this," he told a panel in 2014. "I went down to my local place where you buy socks, and I fund a fluffy, pink, polka-dot sock."

Unbeknownst to Clarke, he donned the sock and didn't unveil it until he walked into the shoot wearing it. "I was standing there, making ridiculous moves," he recalls. "We were on her close-up, and [Clarke] was trying to hold it together, but she just kept laughing."

Film fans are so accustomed to seeing Momoa as a dashing, handsome, wild-maned man that the subversion of his image is what made his 2020 Rocket Mortgage Super Bowl ad so memorable. 

The commercial shows Momoa coming home to unwind, transforming himself from big action stud to a balding, uncool string-bean. He takes off his boots, dropping in height, then removes his prosthetic arms and torso to show gaunt twigs and a nearly-concaved chest. Finally he takes off his hair. 

Obviously, the muscle-shrinking was special effects — but the wig was real, and it was glorious. As viewers watch him pretend to struggle a benchpress, tube-armed Momoa struggling [then] wife Lisa Bonet assists, it's hilarious. As it turns out, a behind-the-scenes video shows he and Bonet were having just as much fun between takes. The irony, perhaps, is that for Momoa, playing a scrawny, balding homebody is probably the biggest stretch he's ever had to make as an actor.

Like George Clooney or the cast of the "Harry Potter" movies, Momoa's co-stars have come to expect some onset pranks. He has seemed particularly fond of teasing his "Aquaman" co-star, Amber Heard, and as one might imagine, a blockbuster film largely set under water gives actors plenty of time to stand around and devise ways to distract from the tedium.

Heard, a reader, is known to bury her nose in books during breaks. Momoa, finding her focus on the written word comical, once thought it would be hilarious to rip out the last pages of her book. When Heard first revealed this on Good Morning America in 2018, it was intended as a colorful anecdote; in the eyes of some, however, it seemed cruel.

"I am a bookworm, I love to read," Heard explained. "When there's a break on set, I like to read. So, he adopted this method of tearing the pages out of my book so I'd pay attention to him. It would drive me crazy, because I'd have like 30 pages left, and they'd be gone."

When Jason Momoa hosted "Saturday Night Live" in 2018, it was something of a coming-out party. After more than a decade of scene-stealing work on the periphery of projects like "Game of Thrones," he was there to promote "Aquaman," far and away his most high-profile role. Appropriately, he gave a heartfelt monologue to start the show — even if much of it was a gag.

Explaining how he wanted to host "SNL" earlier but he was too busy building a successful career and making beautiful babies with his "smoking hot wife," Momoa then began to cry. Choking back the tears, Momoa told himself not to cry because "If you cry, it'll rain in Hawaii." Finally settling his emotions, it all led into a song about how he's the strongest man in the world.

While self-deprecation and exaggerated emotions are a central part of many "SNL" opening monologues, Momoa took it to another level. He somehow managed to both celebrate and make fun of his success, and even take jabs at his tough guy reputation while affirming that he is, in fact, one of the true Hollywood supermen.

Momoa is an avid rock climber, to the point where he is producing a climbing contest show and makes his own rock shoes called the "Momoa Pro." It would seem predestined, then, that he got to present the Academy Award to Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi for their climbing movie "Free Solo," about Alex Honnold's unroped ascent of El Capitan. 

Afterwards, Chin, Honnold, and Momoa seemed to be best friends, with reports that they hung out and even went to a rock gym to climb together.

In a 2019 video posted to the actor's YouTube page, a shirtless Momoa can be seen climbing with Honnold and Chin — and proudly wielding their Oscar. The highlight, perhaps, is when he gets high up on the wall at LA's Sender One and jumped off while climbing — Honnold trying desperately to counterbalance the actor as he gets lifted into the air.

Another Momoa prank had director Francis Lawrence in on the joke, this time on the set of Momoa's Apple+ series "See," where from 2019 – 2022 he was cast as the leader of a tribe in a world where everyone is blind. In one key scene, he was to preside over the birth of a pair of twins, and when it came time to film, the plan was to use real live twin babies to capture the realism. For one take, however, they decided to switch it up.

As he and costar Alfre Woodard recounted to Kelly Clarkson in 2019, after performing several takes with the real infants, he snuck outside the birthing cave and grabbed a pair of baby dolls. Then he walked back in and tripped on purpose, falling on the fake babies and crushing them — and causing the crew and scene co-star Hera Hilmar to think there had been an accident. 

"I fell on the babies," he winced, recounting the joke to moans from Clarkson's audience. "I don't feel good about it. But, it was funny."

For obvious reasons, if "Aquaman" was going to be a hit, the lead character had to establish believable chemistry with Mera; Momoa and Amber Heard built that chemistry by hanging out onset, cracking jokes, bantering, and jokingly smacking each other like two buddies hanging out watching football. Except, they were making a blockbuster superhero movie. 

In a featurette on the "Aquaman" Blu-ray was called "Fun on set with Jason Momoa and Amber Heard," and had the two stars joking around. "We're kind of the same, but with different genders," smiles Momoa.

"Jason and Amber's relationship is awesome," adds co-star Patrick Wilson. "They don't hold back."

The clips show them high-fiving between takes, Heard catching up on her reading, Momoa playing guitar and the duo working on what Momoa calls a "Han Solo/Leia vibe."

"I did suggest the alternate title 'Aquawoman,'" says Heard. "[In the film] you fall in love with them falling in love."

The Haka is a traditional Maori dance, full of aggressive movements, stomping and chanting. It has been used traditionally in encounters between rival groups, from war to sporting events (as the All Blacks popularized). Although Momoa is of Hawaiian descent (related to the Maori through a common Polynesian ancestry but not technically Maori), he was quoted as saying his line also reaches to Aotearoa, which the New Zealand Maori call their homeland. Which explains why he can constantly be seen screaming at the camera between takes.

Momoa got to stage a Haka in full during the "Aquaman" premiere. It was a wild, passionate dance, a dynamic flash mob adding some ceremonial and cultural electricity not normally seen on Hollywood red carpets. In 2017, he participated in one to help fire up UFC fighter Mark Hunt, he dedicated one to Polynesia in 2019 calling it "one of the greatest moments in my life," and one was written into a scene on "See" so Momoa could display his skills. It's a great reminder that while most of Jason Momoa's offscreen action is joking, he also possesses the same warlike intensity of his characters.

Jason Momoa is a big man. A big, strong man, eager to participate in physical challenges as they arise. This doesn't always work out well.

Take, for example, the time David Benioff challenged Jason Momoa to a game of hand slap. As Benioff explains, he thought that while Momoa was strong, but Benioff would be quicker and able to escape the slaps. He was not. The result? Benioff's hands basically got crushed, to the point that he had to go to a hospital.

Another instant was when Momoa and James Corden tried to play a round of the tortilla slap game. As this video shows, it only took one slap. Corden's head whipped to the side, almost as if Momoa had actually punched him in the face. Of course, Corden immediately spit out the water. Tortilla challenge done and as could be expected, the winner was musclebound Jason Momoa. 

The trident is Aquaman's most distinctive props, and Momoa has spent a lot of time on superhero movies carrying the distinctive weapon. It's no surprise, then, that he's been known to have some fun with it.

In behind-the-scenes footage, he is often brandishing the trident playfully, grunting with it in a joking alpha manner. At the "Aquaman" premiere, Momoa did his best Bo Jackson, breaking a trident over his knee. The most inspired use of is trident, however, may have taken place very far from Hollywood.

On the island of Oahu in 2019, apparently some kids came up to Momoa and asked him if they could play with the trident. Momoa took it one step further, crashing a wedding with the pointy staff in his hand. He even photobombed the happy couple by playfully poking at them with the tines. It was a truly regal, comical display; in other words, a classic Momoa move.

Many of the behind-the-scenes videos surrounding "Dune" depict Jason Momoa in constant awe over the otherworldly setting of the rocky Jordanian desert. One day, reeling over yet another glimpse of his surroundings, Momoa and cinematographer Greig Fraser went off exploring. 

"I have a problem sitting still," Momoa explains in the video. Having taken a break for lunch that got extended due to conditions, the two clambered over hills, scrambled up rocks, and took in scenic vista after scenic vista. Eventually, Momoa and Fraser found a new beautiful landscape they hadn't previously seen.

An endeavor that began on a lark resulted in shots of Momoa staring whimsically into eternity from ledges and precipices. As Momoa stared over the loam, the unplanned, improv adventure footage ended up being true kismet. It was so beautiful and inspiring that director Denis Villeneuve put it into the movie. So in a very unique way, Momoa went from hunky actor to production location scout. 

To capture the natural wilderness where his "See" character leads a blind tribe, the show is filmed in often frigid British Columbia. 

In one memorable scene from the show, Voss leads his people in a water fight. To film it, Momoa and much of the cast were immersed for long periods (for 5 days!) in the area's chilly waters. In real life, as fans can see in this video, the cold temps didn't bother the always gun-ho Momoa. 

"This place is unbelievable," he marvels. "This water is so clean, and we're gonna get ready to do a fight scene in it."

His unique combination of awe over his surroundings and humor at the prospect of spending so much time in the frigid water not only makes you like Jason Momoa's joie de vivre, but it's almost enough to make you want to go swimming in a cold, alpine lake. On second thought, maybe it would only be fun if Jason Momoa himself was there as well.