Jason Momoa has opened up about a harrowing near-death surfing experience that convinced him to give up smoking.
The Dune actor explained that the incident occurred just a three months after his daughter Lola Iolani, was born in July 2007, during an open-ocean paddle with surfing legends Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama.
The trio were surfing off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Maui near a famous location called Peʻahi, otherwise known as “Jaws”.
Despite being from a family of surfers, things went awry for Momoa when the leash for his surfboard snapped, leaving him stranded almost a mile offshore.
Appearing on Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett’s Smartless podcast, Momoa said: “I was trained pretty well, so it was fine. So, it was just… I took quite a few [waves] on the head. They were pretty big, like 10-foot Hawaiian waves, but I’m literally probably a mile offshore.”
Continuing, Momoa said that he was “stuck in this crazy spot” on “the outer reef”, adding that the others couldn’t see him. The waves continued to batter the star and were so strong that they ripped his shorts off.
At this stage, Momoa presumed that all hope was lost and was going to die but fortunately managed to anchor himself. “Like I literally gave up, and I’m screaming inside, and my foot just hits the outer reef,” he added. “And I don’t know if it was a fucking whale or like just could be one rock, but I just reached down, grabbed it, I jump up, I get hit by another wave.”
“I dig my feet into the coral, and I’m literally in the middle of the ocean, and I’m just, I could barely put my lips above it just to breathe and get a break, but I had already given up. So it’s like, you’ve already given up and died and have a second chance at it.”
After 10 minutes, Momoa said that his arms and his legs had given up on him but he was miraculously saved by Hamilton. However, Momoa says it was “brutal” paddling out to safety, as his feet were now bleeding. “I was in a bad spot,” he said.
Once he got to safety, Momoa explained that the experience persuaded him to quit smoking for good, having previously smoked two or three packs a day.
“I couldn’t stop for my kids, I couldn’t stop for my ex, I couldn’t stop smoking,” the 46-year-old said. “The moment I came out, I never smoked again. I just died. I just died. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t do it again because I just, I gave up. Like, I gave up my life.”
Momoa, who was born in Honolulu is currently promoting his new Apple TV+ series Chief of War, which tells the story of a the unification of the Hawaiian islands from an indigenous perspective, bringing to life a side of his culture that’s often overlooked and underrepresented.
“We’ve all seen Dances with Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans,” Momoa told The Independent. “I wanted to do that for my people.”
