“It’s not the coolest,” Momoa asserted, before naming several other character names he thinks are cooler

Jason Momoa

Photo: Shane Anthony Sinclair (Getty Images)

Jason Momoa seems like a pretty chill interview subject: He likes talking about beer, he likes having a good time, he’ll pop his shirt off at the drop of a hat for a bit. (From that same interview, he’ll also take the time to draw out the distinction between a “dirtbag” and “a dirt-ball or a shit-bag or a fucking filthy person.” Fun interview, is all we’re saying.) But that means that Momoa will also potentially give their interlocutor some shit, which Men’s Health’s Sean Abrams learned earlier this week when he tried to toss Momoa a softball about whether there’s a “cooler name” than that of his his Dune character Duncan Idaho.

We’d kill for video of this, but the incredulity is clear as Momoa responds by asking “A cooler name?” before clarifying that “There are definitely cooler names. I love Duncan Idaho, but it’s not the coolest.” Hilariously, Momoa then goes on to name what he thinks are the coolest character names he’s ever had, and we don’t know why journalists don’t ask action stars to do this all the time.

Game Of Thrones’ Khal Drogo gets a namecheck, of course, as does Frontier’s Declan Harp, a man whose name, we can’t help but note, is just an apostrophe-s away from being how you’d describe an old-timey musical instrument owned by Elvis Costello. Momoa even namechecks “Ronon Dex,” and can we just say how weirdly sweet it is to us that Jason Momoa can pull his Stargate Atlantis character’s name off the top of his head, and effuse about how cool it is, 15 years after the Syfy show went off the air?

So, no, “Duncan Idaho” does not rate, for all that Momoa is clearly still wild about Dune itself, despite not appearing in the recent Part Two—declaring, of Denis Villeneuve’s latest, “I’m going to go see it again. There are so many things you miss. There are so many things going on.” (He also alludes to the events of Dune Messiah, which he may or may not have a personal stake in, depending on how mad you’re going to be at us about spoilers for a 55-year-old novel, adding, “You should definitely check out the books, man, because a lot of stuff is going to go down.”)