SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains mild spoilers for Fast X. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes in Fast X is far and away the most charismatic and thrilling villain we’ve seen thus far in the Fast & Furious franchise, and that’s primarily because he is completely out of his mind. His motives are familiar (he wants revenge against the protagonists for the death of his father), but he doesn’t just aim to kill Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto and his family; as a flamboyant sadist, he wants to make them all suffer and have fun while doing it. It’s clear that the guy has a screw loose from his first non-flashback scene in the new blockbuster – but no part of the film sums up the character’s personality than watching him raid the bank accounts of the heroes while hanging out in the sun painting the toenails of a pair of corpses.
It’s the best scene in the film and among the wildest in the history of the Fast & Furious franchise – and what only makes it better is knowing its origins. During a press roundtable earlier this month with Jason Momoa, he revealed how the moment became a part of the movie, and explained that it happened during his last day on set. But in setting up how it came to be, he first dug into the first conversations he had about making Fast X.
How Jason Momoa’s Journey Began With Dante Reyes and Fast X
At this point in the Fast & Furious franchise, one of the staples has become sequels with high profile stars playing the principal villains. Fast & Furious 6 brought in Luke Evans, Furious 7 handed the ball to Jason Statham, The Fate Of The Furious brought in Charlize Theron, and F9 introduced John Cena to the canon. In the making of Fast X, the producers sought Jason Momoa to play the new A-list heavy… but he had some guidelines about what he wanted to do with the character.
Discussing the start of his involvement with the blockbuster (and seemingly referencing reports that some actors won’t lose fights on screen), Jason Momoa said,
I met the producers and they wanted me to come in and play a villain, and I just was really adamant about approaching it from a different way. I was very excited to play the villain, and I'm totally ok with dying, 'cause a lot of actors aren't, but I've obviously died all the time. So I was like, 'Hey man, I got no problem. I just wanna make a great character.'
Continuing, Momoa noted that while he was open to a lot of things in becoming part of the Fast & Furious universe, he also had his own specific ideas about what he wanted to do with the franchise’s new big bad. He wanted the character to be pastel colored and fun, but also horrific and vicious:
I asked them politely to let me play certain things and play it a certain way. And they had to agree upon that. And so I came in with a lot of ideas of how I wanted to play him, and they liked it, and they trusted in that, and they wrote from that. And then obviously when Louis came in, we just added more and more and more… I really felt very clear on how I wanted to play him, and we stuck to it, and then they encouraged me to do even more.
It was in that “even more” discussion that the amazing toe-painting scene came up in discussion.
Painting The Toenails Of Corpses Was Jason Momoa’s Last Day On The Fast X Set And Heavily Improvised
Like many stories of history’s greatest moments of inspiration, this one can be traced back to a problem. In the aftermath of Fast X’s big action set piece in Rome at the start of the second act, all of the heroes are scattered, launching multiple plot threads… and director Louis Leterrier realized that the focus on the protagonists meant that the film had lost track of Dante Reyes.
Jason Momoa hadn’t seen the finished cut of Fast X when we were doing the interview, but he recalled how the special sequence came together on his last day on the set of the blockbuster and how he and the filmmakers were basically flying by the seats of their pants. Said Momoa,
I think there's a scene in there where I'm painting some nails on the guy. And you know, it's amazing 'cause Louis came up with some ideas and was like, 'Listen, the thing was like, we don't see you, and we really love seeing you, but you disappear from the movie for like 40 minutes and we don't know where you're at.' And it was my last day of work there, and we kind of improv'd some stuff, but we're like, 'Listen, we need to know where you're at, we need to know you're a psycho, and that you're taking their money.' And then that was pretty much it.
In the scene, Dante – with his hair done up in a pair of pom-poms – sits in the sunshine with the dead bodies of the tech guys he “stole” from Charlize Theron’s Cypher. Not only does he paint their toenails and casually chat with them, but he has taken a roll of transparent tape and fixed ghoulish smiles on their faces. With a laptop in hand, he executes the plot point mentioned above: he leaves all of the heroes penniless.
Momoa explained that Louis Leterrier taped up the faces of the actors himself, and that he brought his own fashion and hairdressing choices to the mix:
We just had a couple things we needed to do, and then we built around that. And I just thought it'd be funny. We did all the tape, and Louis taped these guys up, and then I was like, 'Let's paint their nails.' And then I came in with this outfit and I bought this stuff that I just thought would be great, and I wore my own stuff in there, and then asked if I could wear my hair that way, and they loved it. And no one said, no.
Obviously it got enough “yeses” to be included in the final cut of Fast X – but Jason Momoa wasn’t always sure that it would.
Jason Momoa Wasn’t Sure Fast X’s Nuttiest Scene Would Work – But It Did, And There’s More Being Cooked Up For Fast & Furious 11
Dante Reyes exhibits a whole lot of extreme behavior in Fast X, but the scene in question here is a step beyond everything else. Despite evidently having a heavy creative hand in the making of the sequence, Momoa admitted during the roundtable that he wasn’t sure the whole thing would actually fit into the movie that was being made.
Fortunately, those doubts were erased by enthusiastic responses. Momoa continued,
I'll tell you the truth: I was like, 'I don't know if this is ever gonna make the cut.' And so me and Louis were like, 'Let's have fun.' And they loved it. Everyone loves the thing, and so it ends up in there and it's just so silly and wacky and you get to see what his mindset is after he got messed up. So we would just find it and play. And Louis really, really loves that, and we had so much fun together. He's one of the best directors I've ever worked with.
The fun isn’t stopping anytime soon, either. While Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes unleashed a lot of hell in Fast X, he isn’t done yet, and the actor is set to come back for the untitled sequel (for now known as Fast & Furious 11). The follow-up doesn’t have a set release date yet, but Momoa is already fighting for the opportunity to do more actual driving on set, and he’s cooking up some “pretty fun” ideas with Louis Leterrier, who will be back in the director’s chair. Added Momoa,
The stuff we're cooking up for the next one is pretty fun. Our text thread is pretty amazing. I'm excited to go play again… In movies, there are scenes that are so risky that they're living on the cutting room floor that could have made it. It could be a total like, 'No, this does not work.' And I'm happy it worked.
Fast X, featuring an outstanding ensemble also including Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, John Cena, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Scott Eastwood, Daniela Melchior, Brie Larson, Jason Statham, and Charlize Theron, is now playing in theaters everywhere.
