There are many things we should be thankful for in this world and one of them is Game of Thrones for giving us Jason Momoa. I mean, look at him:
And it turns out the Internet is to thank for Momoa gracing our screens as Khal Drogo on the show, because the Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss found the Baywatch star through fan casting pages.
According to SyFy Wire, the showrunners spoke to the crowd at the Austin Film Festival about the lengthy casting process for the show and how difficult it was to find the perfect Drogo.
Benioff said, “It was really hard to find a good Khal Drogo. We had all these auditions and no one was quite right. And then we’re looking at some website that had ‘Fan Casting of Game of Thrones.’ A lot of it was kinda knuckleheaded, but some of it was really smart. And there was one person, or maybe a few people, who said, ‘Oh, it should be this guy Jason Momoa.’ And we’d never heard of Jason before – and I apologize to the Baywatch fans – but I haven’t gotten around to it. But I saw a picture of him, we both did, and I thought, ‘Well, that really does look like Khal Drogo.'”
So, it turns out fans can be helpful in the creation process of a show!
Momoa’s audition famously featured him doing the Haka to which Weiss laughed and said, “No one asked him to do that.”
Watch the audition here:
While Momoa’s time on Game of Thrones was short-lived, it was the role that shot the actor into stardom with him landing the role of Aquaman soon after.
Following the final episode of the show, Momoa made his feelings known about Daenerys’ (Emilia Clarke) death, and it was pretty clear he wasn’t happy about it.
He had a similar reaction when Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) was telling Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) he should sit on the Iron Throne and become King of Westeros.
Same, Jason. Same.