Jason Momoa on Final Season of ‘See’ and Saying Goodbye to “Character I Love So Deeply”
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Jason Momoa has a short answer to tease what’s to come on Season 3 of his Apple TV+ series See: “It’s bigger.”
It’s also the end. The eight episodes are billed as the final chapter of the series which is set in a primitive future hundreds of years after human beings have lost the ability to see due to a devastating virus.
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Season 3 picks up nearly a year after Momoa’s Baba Voss triumphed in a bloody battle with his nemesis brother Edo, played by Dave Bautista, only to leave his wife and children behind and wander into the woods. But when a Trivantian scientist, played by a menacing David Hewlett, develops a devastating form of sighted weaponry that threatens the future of humanity, Baba Voss returns to Paya in order to protect his tribe once more.
Momoa has more to say about how hard he works to up the ante and make sure that these forthcoming episodes fit the show’s epic scale.
“I have a pretty large career doing action so if there’s something that feels a bit stale and I’d like to try something different, they’re open to it,” Momoa told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday night outside L.A.’s DGA Theater, site of the red carpet premiere. “And the truth of it is, me and and [showrunner Jonathan Tropper] have a wonderful working relationship. There are things he sees in me that most people don’t and if I say, ‘Hey, I’d literally like to go here with the character,’ it challenges him to get to that level to write me something that is at that level. It’s nice to be able to make him proud.”
Speaking of getting to that level, the latest season of See is hitting screens at the same time as two other epic shows, HBO’s Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon and Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Asked why his show doesn’t receive the breathless attention as those others, Tropper, who joined as showrunner for Season 2, was diplomatic.
“Game of Thrones had many seasons and years to build their audience. We are a three season show that started on a fledgling streamer so we don’t get that kind of audience. But I do think that the show will live on because that’s the beauty of streamers. People will continue to find the show and certainly as, as Jason’s star keeps rising and rising more and more, people are seeking out the show and you love that people keep finding it. We’re very happy.”
Tropper seems pleased about his resources, too. The trailer for Season 3 teases an all-out war to come with explosive battle sequences, legions of extras and grand sets, all of which is nothing new for the series.
“We’ve always had the same budget and it’s been a very healthy budget,” Tropper notes. “[For Season 3], it was just about picking the moments we really wanted to blow out. And when you have a leading actor like Jason Momoa, you have to build battles to fit his frame. Jason is also the first one to read something and say, ‘No, we have to do more than this. We have to go bigger than this.’ He really weighs in heavily on those decisions and we do whatever we can to make something really epic and big and meaningful.”
Judging by what’s on screen thus far, they also do their best to make it bloody. The series has become known for particularly brutal fight sequences with no shortage of gory deaths. “Jason has a real appetite for that kind of stuff,” Tropper says when asked about it, later praising his leading man for fighting through many injuries to get the job done. “The series just lends itself to this brutal world and we always want to make sure it feels organic and natural.”
Tropper and every cast member THR spoke with on Tuesday said the key to creating an authentic and natural world is Joe Strechay. The blindness consultant and co-executive producer, who is blind himself, has been with the show from the start. He says they work hard to populate the series with as many blind or low vision actors as possible while also forging close collaborations with sighted actors to get the best performances.
“The work is complicated because each character is different in how they navigate the world and what they do,” says Strechay, who adds that he leans on a community of blind or low vision insiders for feedback on scripts and/or specific scenes. “They’re all over the world and I use them for input and I also work closely with Jonathan who is tremendous as are our folks at Endeavor Content, Chernin Entertainment and Apple.”
Spoiler alert: THR spotted Strechay in a cameo role in the first episode of Season 3, in a role that marks his first appearance in the series. He plays a bartender in a scene starring Archie Madekwe’s Kofun and Tom Mison’s Lord Harlan. “They’ve been asking if I wanted to be in the show at some point but I was really focused on work in the production side,” Strechay explains. “But later in the project, I was like, here’s a role that I think I can do. It was pretty simple and I got to do all kinds of pouring and stuff. I had a lot of fun with it.”
Fun might not be the best word to describe what Momoa has put himself through these past three seasons. “This role was the biggest one of putting me through the wringer,” he said. “Because of what was going on in my own life as well as what was going on with the character. What he had to go through was pretty much full max, full tilt, all the time.”
But it’s clear as he prepares to say goodbye to Baba Voss and his See family that the experience means so much to him. “I’ve never played a role where I’ve been able to go through this whole arc and spend this much time with a character that I love so deeply.”
Season 3 of See debuts Aug. 26 with new episodes every Friday on Apple TV+ through Oct. 14.
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