Jonathan Majors Had One Big Fear About The MCU
Jonathan Majors has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame over the past several years. After being scouted for his first role in a feature film while still a drama student in Yale's MFA program, it wasn't long before he was booking juicy parts with astonishing regularity. It was his role as Montgomery Allen in "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" that won him the attention of Disney and Marvel Studios, who would hire him as the next big bad of the MCU. In between those roles, he battled monsters and dark magic as a leading man in the HBO series "Lovecraft Country" and played a cowboy with a need for vengeance in "The Harder They Fall," among other projects. Later this year, he'll get in the ring with fellow Marvel villain Michael B. Jordan in "Creed III."
In 2021, Majors made his debut as the Marvel villain Kang the Conqueror, appearing in the season finale of "Loki" on Disney+. Now, he finally makes his big screen debut in the role opposite Paul Rudd in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." His run as the most fearsome threat to the future of the multiverse and spiritual successor to Thanos (Josh Brolin) will culminate in 2026 with "Avengers: Secret Wars."
But before being cast as the multidimensional tyrant, Majors had some big concerns about joining a franchise like the MCU. As Majors explained, his fear was that in joining the multibillion-dollar universe, he'd have to give up one of the most beloved aspects of his craft.
Jonathan Majors didn't want to give up 'real acting' as Kang
Speaking with Vanity Fair, "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" star Jonathan Majors said he was hesitant to join the MCU for fear he'd have to give up his highly trained approach to acting. The actor spoke of his time in Yale's drama program and the acting methods and tools he learned there. He mentioned how discussion there often touched on how from the outside it appeared that Marvel movies might not involve a lot of skilled performance. "Again, there were these debates in drama school," he said. "They would always be like, 'Is that acting? Is that real acting?'"
At the time, those questions were hypotheticals. After all, Majors had no way of knowing he'd one day be tapped to act in an MCU movie, let alone a string of them. So when that near impossibility became a reality, Majors was at first fearful he'd have to give up some of his highly trained thespian skills for the role. Luckily, those fears were quickly allayed, as he shared, "They've not asked me to change my approach to acting, which was my biggest fear."
Indeed, Majors was a highlight of "Loki," where his off-kilter performance as the Kang variant called He Who Remains was both captivating and unsettling. Now, critics are praising his haunted performance as a much more fearsome version of the Conqueror in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," which is now showing in theaters everywhere.