Jonathan Majors talks ‘Devotion,’ Marvel’s big bad Kang and being a dad: ‘Your heart just changes’
Jonathan Majors was completely devoted to Iggy the iguana.
Majors, 33, was gifted his first pet for his ninth birthday, right before he moved from California to Texas. “I’d get up in the middle of the night, hunting for crickets,” he remembers. “I just loved him. And when he went, my heart was just broken.”
His new Korean War drama “Devotion” (in theaters Wednesday), in which he plays real-life Navy aviator Jesse Brown, has Majors thinking about the definition of that movie title: “Devotion is going beyond essentially the call of duty. Coach tells you to run 2 miles, you run 3 miles. Not for ego, not for anything else, but because of a spiritual acknowledgement of your connection to something else. And Iggy was the first time I experienced that.”
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Majors takes flight in his new film while also soaring into Hollywood’s stratosphere: Go to the movies and half the trailers you’ll see feature the Yale-educated actor. An Emmy nominee for HBO’s “Lovecraft Country,” Majors brings the next big bad to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Kang the Conqueror in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (due Feb. 17) and puts his dukes up against Michael B. Jordan as ring antagonist Damian Anderson in boxing drama “Creed III” (March 3).
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In Brown, the first Black naval aviator in a newly desegregated military, Majors found a man with a similar drive. “His monomania for flying is akin to my monomania for acting and art making,” Majors says in an interview at the historic Paramount Theater, a few hours before a Virginia Film Festival screening of “Devotion.” “I saw his ambition and his willingness and ultimately his service, because he’s doing that for his family. He’s doing that for himself. He’s doing that for his country. He’s doing that for his culture, his people at large. And I, too, am humbly on that same mission.”
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In real life, Majors has those gut-check experiences regularly, especially in his chosen field. “There’s many moments of, OK, you’ve got to do it now,” he says. That’s why rituals are important to him: During a portrait session, the photographer asks him to put his cup away and turn off his music, and Majors politely declines. “Those are my ways of coaching myself up and keeping myself focused.”
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Powell enjoyed seeing Majors’ big heart up close. “He cares so much,” he says. “We are just brothers for life.” And “Quantumania” director Peyton Reed calls Majors “a force” and says the actor has one thing in common with his villainous Kang: “He wants to win. He really sees every acting role as a challenge, and wants to get better and better.”
For Majors, playing a real-life figure like Brown or Nat Love in “The Harder They Fall” means taking extra responsibility, because they’re “someone who walked this life. That individual actually touched other individuals who may or may not be with us,” he says.
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“I just don’t like to act. It’s hard for me. It makes my brain go crazy. I feel silly,” Majors adds with a laugh.
A thoughtful conversation turns downright nerdy when discussing inspiration vs. imagination in his work – “I feel like I’m teaching a class” – and turns giddy when he’s asked about his interests, from dogs and horses to cooking and Formula 1 racing (“That’s kind of a new thing”). His expressive smile lights up the most, though, when talking about “my muse.”
His daughter’s “been the guiding light for me,” Majors says. “I’ve always wanted to do this, always wanted to be here to do this stuff. But she has altered my engine in a way that I would’ve wanted to, but I don’t think I would’ve been able to if I wasn’t thinking about that little girl and making her proud.”
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