Jason Momoa is shutting down rumors of a feud with Chris Hemsworth after the pair teased each other about their respective superhero physiques.
“There is no beef,” Momoa, 44, told Extra in a Friday, December 15, interview. “I actually called Chris to help me get ready for Aquaman. He owns Centr Fit. It is wonderful. To me, he is the poster man for in shape. He looks wonderful. He is extremely big.”
Momoa portrays the King of the Seven Seas in the DC universe, while Hemsworth, 40, has starred as Marvel’s Thor since 2011. Momoa recently took to social media to joke about wearing a padded wetsuit for his role, while Hemsworth had to train to play the often shirtless God of Thunder.
“What’s up, Hemsworth? You had to work out. I didn’t,” Momoa quipped during a November TikTok video. Hemsworth quickly responded with a video of himself doing bicep curls, saying, “That’s a lovely padded costume you got there, Jason. I prefer a skin suit myself, mate.”
Momoa explained to Extra that he only poked fun at Hemsworth because he doesn’t have to deal with pushing his body to get into the same level of top-tier shape. “He wins, he wins,” he said, noting that the video was just “supposed to be a joke.”
“We’re friends,” he continued. “We just get a kick out of it because I’m definitely not as big as him. I have to wear a suit to be that big.”
Aquaman’s faux muscles aren’t the only upgrade fans will see on Momoa’s suit when Aquaman 2 premieres on December 22. The actor shared that his wardrobe got some other major changes for the sequel, which is officially titled Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
“Second round. New suit. More action,” he wrote via Instagram in September 2021 alongside a photo of himself in a new suit accented with dark blue and silver. (His previous garb was yellow-orange and green in reference to the early Aquaman comics.)
The film itself will also see its fair share of changes. “This time around, I just wanted to do everything I haven’t done yet,” Momoa told Extra. “I want to see him as a father. Now that he’s king, how does he handle that in his own world?”
Momoa, who helped develop the story for the sequel, shared why it was important to him to see his character raising a child solo.
“I was raised by a single mother who worked many jobs and I really wanted to, in the script, really just give homage to all the single parents out there who are the real superheroes,” he explained. “So, that was a bit of love for my mom.”
That doesn’t mean viewers should expect all warm and fuzzy feelings. “There are some really good twists in it too,” Momoa said before adding that there are some “scary moments’ in the film as well. “I’m a big wuss. I am,” he quipped. “I don’t do horror really well. You would be surprised what I’m scared of.”
The film’s director, James Wan, backed Momoa’s claims of a darker follow-up flick during an August 2020 panel discussion. “The second one is a little bit more serious, a little more relevant to the world we’re living in today,” he said. “That’s where it wants to go.”
Wan, 46, later pointed out in a separate interview with Total Film that Aquaman 2 is actually heavily inspired by one of his favorite horror movies, Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires. “You can take the boy out of horror, but you can never take the horror out of the boy,” he joked.
As for whether Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the last time fans will see Momoa in the role of Arthur Curry, the DC star said it’s likely “the end of the road,” but he isn’t shutting down the idea entirely.
“Twelve years of playing Aquaman, you gotta go see how we wrap it up,” he said. “If fans really, really love it, you never know. It is all about the fans.”
