{"id":5863,"date":"2025-09-09T20:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T20:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/5863\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T20:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T20:57:11","slug":"jason-momoa-talks-ultimate-horror-in-horrific-chief-of-war-episode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/5863\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Momoa Talks ‘Ultimate Horror’ in Horrific ‘Chief of War’ Episode"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains spoilers up to episode seven of Chief of War<\/a>, \u201cDay of Spilled Brains.\u201d]<\/p>\n

\n\tJason Momoa<\/a> has waited his entire life to make Chief of War, the ambitious new Apple TV+ series that dramatizes the reunification of Hawai\u2019i in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. After making a career largely out of playing fictional action heroes \u2014 Aquaman in the DC Universe, an ill-fated nomadic warlord in Game of Thrones<\/a>, a swordmaster in the Dune movies \u2014 the 46-year-old finally gets to play a real-life superhero<\/a> in a passion project set in his father\u2019s homeland.<\/p>\n

\n\tCo-created by Momoa and Thomas Pa\u2019a Sibbett, the nine-part series \u2014 which could be renewed for more seasons \u2014 stars Momoa as Native Hawaiian warrior Ka\u2019iana. Over the course of the first season<\/a>, Ka\u2019iana returns home from traveling overseas \u2014 where he witnessed the horrors of slavery, famine and monetary greed \u2014 with the goal of unifying the four warring kingdoms of the Hawaiian Islands to save his own people from the threat of colonization. However, he is ebuffed at every turn by his fellow chiefs, most notably Kamehameha I (Kaina Makua), who later becomes the conqueror and first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawai\u2019i.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series features a cast of predominantly Polynesian actors speaking in multiple languages and was filmed in Hawai\u2019i and New Zealand as an unprecedented retelling of Hawaiian history from a distinctively native perspective.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEveryone that has come here has these vacations and brings home these memories, but they fall in love with Hawaii. Now, they\u2019re going to be in the comfort of their home watching the history \u2014 stuff that they didn\u2019t even know about,\u201d Momoa tells The Hollywood Reporter on a recent video call from Hawai\u2019i. \u201cBut what it\u2019s going to do for us, for Indigenous [actors], and how it resonates with our people \u2014 that\u2019s all I care about. We are the great, great grandchildren bringing all of this back and trying to inspire the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt a time when history is being erased in classrooms across the country, Momoa adds, \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone knows a part of this American history, so I think there\u2019s a lot of things that people are going to be like, \u2018Holy shit!\u2019 And they\u2019re going to get a big deep dive into what went on here. I think they\u2019re going to be really interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, executive producers and longtime collaborators Momoa and Sibbett open up about why they decided to use Ka\u2019iana as the entry point in this retelling of Hawaiian history, how they thought about the interplay between the English and \u02bb\u014clelo Hawai\u2019i languages, and how the end of the seventh episode \u2014 titled after the real-life \u201cDay of Spilled Brains,\u201d a tragic moment in Hawaiian history \u2014 sets the tone for the life-and-death stakes of the final two episodes.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tYou two were first approached to tell the story of Kamehameha I about a decade ago, but you chose to include that historical figure in a larger series centered around Ka\u2019iana. What do you remember from your initial conversations with each other about this project, and how did that idea evolve into the final product we see in Chief of War?<\/p>\n

\n\tJASON MOMOA We actually had a different script.<\/p>\n

\n\tTHOMAS PA\u2019A SIBBETT Tthe truth is that Kamehameha\u2019s story would be a slam dunk for Hollywood. It\u2019s got all the [elements] you need and would want. So we did talk about it. It was something we thought about, and ultimately it just wasn\u2019t our place to tell it. There was a lot involved with that, culturally speaking.<\/p>\n

\n\tMOMOA Also, I would never play Kamehameha. I would never have the balls, to say the least, to actually think I could play someone with that stature. So we wanted to find a story that could encompass the whole world, because there were many people like Kahekili or Kam\u0101malu. So Thomas did come up with an idea for the story of Ka\u2019iana. He was actually the most famous Hawaiian at that time, because he had set sail around the world and went to so many different places that he was very well-known.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo that became very interesting, as a journeyman myself, to go, \u201cWow, what an interesting story to come from this world, to be a reluctant war chieftain who felt like he was done wrong and then actually betrayed again, and then he flees where he\u2019s from \u2014 only to see slavery, sickness and just everything as he went around the world.\u201d [He was able] to go up to Alaska and then bring back 10 war canoes filled with weapons to then help unify the islands because [he thinks they] need to get everything together because of what\u2019s coming [to their shores].<\/p>\n

\n\tTo have that kind of perspective is a disease, in a way. He can never go back [to his old way of thinking] because of what he has seen, and then he can\u2019t really connect to anyone in his culture, but he also wants to help them and save them because he knows what\u2019s coming and [the importance of] being able to trade with the rest of the world. So I feel like that story is very complex. I\u2019ve never quite played a character like that, and I don\u2019t necessarily agree with a lot of the views that he has.<\/p>\n

\n\tA lot of these characters \u2014 the things they have done \u2014 it\u2019s pretty crazy to connect [the events]. We have [to go from point] A to B, but there\u2019s so much we had to fill in that we don\u2019t know. So it\u2019s been an amazing partnership and the time to create worlds like this is exciting. If people love this, this show opens up \u2014 it gets even bigger. And that\u2019s exciting, once you go down the rabbit hole of the history. We\u2019re hitting historical moments, but also, we\u2019re condensing time in some ways.<\/p>\n

\n\tSIBBETT It is wonderful to be able to attack a story this way, and realistically, it\u2019s what happens when stories can be built from the inside out. That was the other approach we had. We realized that, yes, Kamehameha is a story that would work and people would enjoy that. But if you ask us, we know our history [so well] that it\u2019s like, \u201cWell, look, if you shift the perspective just a little bit, you hit this guy instead of that guy.\u201d Now we have a whole other world that audiences would\u2019ve never known about.<\/p>\n

\n\tKa\u2019iana is such a lesser well-known story. Despite his positioning in that time period, he was truly the only Hawaiian that people ever talked about. They were coming to the islands looking for him. They had heard about him or worked with him. Captains were like, \u201cNow we know these islands exist. So where is he? Can he guide us? He can help us.\u201d What a great fertile ground for storytelling, and the story that I don\u2019t think anybody else would\u2019ve found if they didn\u2019t have that insider connection to Hawai\u2019i itself.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJason Momoa as Ka\u2019iana in Chief of War.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tApple TV+<\/p>\n

\n\tJason, to your point, Ka\u2019iana was the first chief to travel around the world, and he returned with a very clear understanding of the threat that colonization would pose to his people, even though the four islands were warring at the time. How did you think about creating an emotional arc for him over the course of these nine episodes? How did you want him to evolve as a leader?<\/p>\n

\n\tSIBBETT We\u2019re trying to be careful, because to talk about Ka\u2019iana is to talk about his whole journey, which is a story that we still want to tell. So if we\u2019re just keeping it within the context [of this season], it really is everything that Jason described. He\u2019s a guy who ends up in a foreign land and his eyes are being opened. It would be the equivalent of landing on the moon and seeing aliens and how they operate, and then having to go back home and warn people the aliens are coming. It\u2019s great for character, and that\u2019s really what we can explore this season. Him seeing the danger, trying to ring the alarm \u2014 and how do you do that to people who have never seen the moon?<\/p>\n

\n\tMOMOA Ka\u2019iana is struggling because he wants to] revolt against his king, to go against Kamehameha, knowing that these guys are bad, that this white man is bad, that he\u2019s twisted these things. And then [he has] to go, \u201cNo, this is m\u0101malahoe. We don\u2019t do this. These are our rules and our laws. But you know that he\u2019s going to hurt people, and you have to go against your king\u201d \u2014 and that\u2019s just the human condition going, \u201cFuck, they\u2019re wrong and you\u2019re wrong. This needs to stop.\u201d You\u2019re in the same position going, \u201cOh man, we know this is what\u2019s going to happen [to these Hawaiians],\u201d so you\u2019re torn as an audience member.<\/p>\n

\n\tSIBBETT But that urgency causes them to make mistakes. What\u2019s great about the story is that just because you know something doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re making the right decisions. We are following this character, we\u2019re trusting him \u2014 and then all of a sudden he messes up, or he\u2019s in a situation where he is 100 percent correct, and they better listen to him. This story is as universal as anything else, and we were excited to dig into it and allow the story to be told to introduce us to this world, but really follow all of these great characters that lead us to a really great story.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m very fascinated by the way you balance \u02bb\u014clelo Hawai\u2019i with English in this show. The first two episodes are entirely in the native Hawaiian language, and the arrival of some non-Hawaiian characters \u2014 mostly white stowaways and a Black slave \u2014 gradually introduces English into the mix. At some point later in the season, some Hawaiian characters only want to speak in their native language, some only want to speak in English, and some switch seamlessly between the two languages depending on the situation or the person they\u2019re interacting with. How did you think about the interplay and interaction of language in this show?<\/p>\n

\n\tSIBBETT When you take a step back and look at the big picture, language is also a representation of what we give and take when cultures are mixed and start to come together. There\u2019s some good things, there\u2019s some bad things. Communication\u2019s obviously key. Hawaiians actually had an edict from a king that said, \u201cI want you all to learn to read and write English.\u201d Within 50 years, Hawai\u2019i\u2019s 97 percent, almost 98 percent completely literate \u2014 the highest literacy rate of any country around the world. So it\u2019s understanding that Hawaiians were adaptive, that they actually valued learning, and we get to show that through this course of language.<\/p>\n

\n\tMOMOA I sometimes get extremely pissed off when you watch a movie, and you\u2019re like, \u201cWhy am I watching this guy do it in a Native American accent? It\u2019s a French movie.\u201d There\u2019s always those choices that you have to make, but there\u2019s just no way you would ever make this without it being in the Hawaiian language \u2014 and it\u2019s the most beautiful language in the world. Having said that, my character obviously travels outside of there. If you were going to be a war chief, the first thing you\u2019re going to know is your enemy. You\u2019re going to know your surroundings, you\u2019re going to learn the [enemy\u2019s] language. You would be an idiot, a horrible chief of war, if you did not understand the other language of everyone. So it is very essential for me to learn.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe condensed time, but he went on many journeys and then came back. Obviously, we wanted everyone else to be learning too, because Kamehameha had advisors, they had stowaway white guys who were teaching the language to them, and we wanted them to be educated and get through it quickly. But certain people like Ke\u014dua, Kahekili, Kamehameha \u2014 [the English language] makes no sense to them. They can have their advisors be [focused on] all that [English]. So it was a nice blend.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMoses Goods in \u201cDay of Spilled Brains.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tApple TV+<\/p>\n

\n\tEach episode feels epic and cinematic in scope and scale, but one of the most gut-wrenching moments happens at the end of episode seven, when Captain Simon Metcalfe (Jason Hood) and his crew, after their offer of trade was kindly but firmly rejected by Chief Kamehameha, go to the nearest bay, fill their canons with nail bombs, and opens fire on hundreds of innocent Hawaiians. Jason, can you give voice to what is going through Ka\u2019iana\u2019s mind as he watches his worst nightmare \u2014 the senseless killing of his own people at the hands of the \u201cpaleskins\u201d \u2014 come true from afar?<\/p>\n

\n\tMOMOA That was the ultimate horror. It\u2019s to come back, know what\u2019s coming, and then voice what you\u2019ve seen, and not be trusted and then also have to live by some laws that you necessarily don\u2019t believe in anymore. [Ka\u2019iana now believes] there aren\u2019t these gods, they aren\u2019t going to look after us, and these people are going to hurt us if we don\u2019t get aligned. So to be muzzled and not be heard, but also be poisoned by the outside rule, I feel like he\u2019s coming back [to Hawai\u2019i] and carrying that [burden]. He feels inflicted when he comes back, but he can\u2019t let that go.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe king says, \u201cYou are not allowed to do this. You can\u2019t retaliate.\u201d But then when [the massacre] happens, all these people were murdered for nothing because they didn\u2019t listen. You\u2019re in these places where they\u2019ve never been this way before. These are the first times this [kind of outside violence] has ever happened to these people \u2014 and it\u2019s frustrating for the audience, it\u2019s frustrating for the characters even when we\u2019re both wrong in many ways.<\/p>\n

\n\tKa\u2019iana constantly keeps trying to do stuff, and the door keeps shutting. When you look at all the advisors, some of the main advisors are stowaways. These paleskins were probably the lowest of lows [in the social hierarchy in England], but they just happened to survive, and they\u2019re the advisors to Kamehameha because they\u2019ve seen the world. So imagine that: Someone who isn\u2019t necessarily a high-ranking [official], but because they\u2019re there and can advise and whisper in the ear of our king, they can spread rumors about everyone, really.<\/p>\n

\n\tSIBBETT One thing to point out, because you\u2019re talking about something really specific, is that this whole section is actually historically accurate. There was that confrontation on the ship beforehand where Ka\u2019iana just believed that they couldn\u2019t allow Captain Metcalfe to continue to operate in Hawai\u2019i. Kamehameha turned it down and said, \u201cNo, man, I don\u2019t know why you would want to kill him.\u201d And he didn\u2019t quite understand that. So Ka\u2019iana did try to sneak on board with his men, and they did try to take out Captain Metcalfe, but he was stopped by Kamehameha. They argued in Hawaiian, and the crew didn\u2019t quite understand what was going on. So for Jason, as an actor, he had to then fill in the gaps to figure out, \u201cWell, now what kind of emotion does that evoke?\u201d Because history wrote that story for us.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe massacre that happened [in this episode] really did take place. It\u2019s a real thing that happened at Olowalu. It has to be something that the character goes through because we are still dealing with the trauma of that event today. When Simon Metcalfe left [Hawai\u2019i in real life], he didn\u2019t technically go into the next harbor; he went to the next island. But for us, it was a way for us to be able to say, \u201cLook, this is a real story. The only difference in the writing was to make sure that Ka\u2019iana\u2019s character gets to experience it.\u201d Our characters are all impacted by it, because the truth is we\u2019re still affected by it today. The name of the episode is \u201cDay of Spilled Brains,\u201d because in Hawaiian we refer to that event as Kalolopahu, or \u201cDay of Spilled Brains.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did you figure out the logistics of shooting that massacre scene? Did you ever consider having that attack play out in a different way?<\/p>\n

\n\tSIBBETT It was tricky, because Hawaiians actually went out to sea to meet him [in real life], and the first version of the story was Hawaiian canoes were getting shot and people were getting hit and being dragged out of the water. It\u2019s a lot. So to make it easier, we decided to do it where the ship is there [on the water], and they shoot onto land. Of course, that in and of itself is still impactful and traumatizing, but it\u2019s not near as bad as it really was. But if you want to talk real logistics, that particular scene was actually shot in Aotearoa [New Zealand], and we needed to make sure that we were okay with the tribes to shoot on their land and to tell the story of this type of significance. [We asked] whether or not we should even put explosives underneath the sand\u00a0\u2014 is that going to cause issues to their local marine life and all of that? So there was a lot taken into account for that scene \u2014 from the writing to the location to making sure that we were also culturally appropriate to the tribes in that area.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJason Momoa and Luciane Buchanan in \u201cDay of Spilled Brains.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tApple TV+<\/p>\n

\n\tCircling back to the start of this conversation, there are decades of history you could retell in this show, but you had to figure out what to include and not include in just nine episodes \u2014 with the hope of potentially returning to tell more of that story in subsequent seasons. How did you settle on the \u201cDay of Spilled Brains\u201d as a launching-pad into the final episodes of season one? Did you always know you wanted to include this horrific moment in history?<\/p>\n

\n\tSIBBETT I think we were always planning on doing it. It is the wounded knee of Hawai\u2019i. It\u2019s important because it enables us to really look at this point in history and dissect what went wrong. Not everything about cultures coming together is bad, but this was one of them. History gives us the ability to look back and see what led to it, what caused it, what was the mindset, and for us to make sure we\u2019re not making these types of mistakes again. Story-wise, it was just a matter of figuring out how we\u2019re going to make it fit, and what parts of it needed to be dramatized in order for it to work. But a lot of the history was there.<\/p>\n

\n\tI always thought it was fascinating from that point of view to say, \u201cSo if Ka\u2019iana had killed Captain Simon Metcalfe, then that massacre would\u2019ve never happened.\u201d But on the flip side, you could argue, \u201cWell, was [Ka\u2019iana] one of the reasons why [Metcalfe] did it?\u201d So it becomes this really interesting moment in history where everybody could take blame for it. Simon Metcalfe clearly takes blame for it, but everybody, depending on how you\u2019re looking at the story, can take some blame.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tChief of War is now streaming on Apple TV+, with the season finale set to drop on Sept. 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains spoilers up to episode seven of Chief of War, \u201cDay of Spilled Brains.\u201d] Jason Momoa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6869,146,463,85,46,6870],"class_list":["post-5863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-chief-of-war","tag-entertainment","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jason-momoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}