Rugged Muscular God Jason Momoa On Filming ‘Dune’: ‘I Felt Beautiful In This Film’

Jason Momoa‘s brand is being a buff, rugged mass of badass, hunky handsomeness, but while filming Dune, the actor finally felt an adjective he’d never felt before: Beautiful. And now that he’s had a taste, he’s never going back.

While sitting down with massive Dune fan Stephen Colbert and the rest of the cast to celebrate the premiere of the movie’s first trailer, Momoa gushed about the opportunity to star in the Denis Villeneuve film alongside actors like Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem. He also raved about working with Villeneuve, and how it set the bar for the rest of his career.

“Working with Denis and this level of actors, I learned so much every day,” Momoa told Colbert during the Variety panel. “I don’t ever want to go back to not being treated that [way]. I felt beautiful in this film. It’s a very hard thing to say, but I felt very beautiful.”

Momoa also revealed a little known fact about himself: He’s not a fan of running, and apparently, he had to do a lot of in his role as Duncan Idaho. But in true Momoa fashion, he masked his pain behind his rugged exterior:

“I’ve never run this much in my life,” Momoa said. “The sun was setting and so we had to get the shot. I had to run through this windstorm to Timothée, and I couldn’t see where I was going. I just didn’t want to fall on my face and I didn’t want to disappoint [Villeneuve]. But I’m not the best runner … and the amount of the chafing and the sweat that had built up, and I was like, I’m not gonna give up, I’m not gonna give up, but inside, I was crying like a little baby. There’s no way I want to be the black sheep in this thing, man.”

It looks like Momoa powered through and got the job… dune Yup, that was awful. No excuse for that.