Up until four years ago, the entire filmography of Jonathan Majors consisted of a minor role in a televised adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, a segment in short film anthology Do Not Disturb, and that was it. These days, he’s now recognized as one of the fastest-rising young stars in the industry, and his ascent has been nothing short of meteoric.
After first gaining widespread recognition for his acclaimed turn in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Majors has delivered strong work in Jungleland, Da 5 Bloods and Lovecraft Country, with star studded Netflix Western The Harder They Fall coming later this year, while he’s set to face off against Michael B. Jordan as the antagonist of Creed III.
Oh, and he’s also been established as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s next major threat, having debut as He Who Remains in the final episode of Loki‘s first season. Majors is already shooting his next outing as Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, so he’s not wasting any time in getting comfortable as the franchise’s big bad.
The MCU largely sticks to what it knows best with several tweaks and alterations made here and there, but in a new interview Loki director Kate Herron revealed that Majors heavily improvised during his lengthy monologue opposite Tom Hiddleston’s trickster and Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie, which ultimately benefited the scene immensely.
“He was never meant to get on the desk. That was the fun thing with the improvisation. The camera team saw him start to move, and Autumn Durald was like, ‘Okay…’, and then you saw the cameras start to move. It was almost like a dance with him. But that was not planned. It just blew us away because it was just so cool. That was the fun thing with him, I love the way he brought movement to the character in different ways, because I think that was really important as well. Where are we going to go for that big energy moment? Where are we going to draw people in? I love the bit when he sinks into the chair and he’s like, ‘I’m old and I’m tired’, and you feel his frailness in a way, you feel his aging, even though he’s obviously a young man.”
Josh Brolin may have been squeezed into a motion capture leotard for his stint as the MCU’s end-of-level boss, but Kevin Feige and the rest of the creative team clearly have immense faith in Majors’ talents if they’ve tasked him to invade the entire multiverse without even the merest hint of prosthetics or CGI in sight, with his acting ability more than enough to get the job done.
