Jonathan Majors’ Ant-Man villain brings darker tone to the Marvel franchise

Jonathan Majors reveals his plans to disrupt the previously light-hearted Ant-Man franchise, director Peyton Reed goes “bigger and darker”.

Jonathan Majors came into the tightly-knit Ant-Man family with one thing on his mind – disruption.

“I’m like the cousin that’s coming in and tearing up the family unit,” he says with a laugh. “That’s my job.”

The first two Ant-Man movies, with Paul Rudd in the title role as the shrinking superhero and Evangeline Lilly as his partner the Wasp, were outliers in the all-conquering Marvel Cinematic Universe, lighter in tone, lower in stakes and more family-friendly than some of their better known cousins such as Iron Man and Captain America.

But for the third chapter – the 31st film in the MCU – producer Kevin Feige and director Peyton Reed wanted to go bigger and darker. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is also the first film in the so-called Phase Five of the movies and brings to the fore the supervillain Kang, who will be the main antagonist for Earth’s mightiest heroes in the series of interconnected movies to come.

For such a pivotal role in the multibillion-dollar franchise, they needed someone with the acting chops, the physical presence and the menace to take over from James Brolin’s Thanos as the big bad that audiences love to hate.

Reed had seen everything Majors had made – from stealing scenes opposite Christian Bale in his debut film role in the Western Hostiles to the bonkers horror fantasy TV series Lovecraft Country and Spike Lee’s Vietnam War drama Da 5 Bloods – and knew he’d found his man.

Jonathan Majors as Kang The Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

“You can’t take your eyes off him,” says Reed.

“He had the physical countenance I had imagined for Kang, he’s a force of nature and he’s a classically trained Yale actor. I loved the idea of bringing that energy – which is a very different energy to the Ant-Man movies – into our world and watching that collision happen.”

Majors took his job as an agent of chaos on the Ant-Man set seriously.

As much as he says that Rudd and Reed were welcoming, accommodating and “very good papa bears”, he chose to keep a distance from his co-stars, who also included Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas, so as to heighten the conflict when the cameras rolled.

Majors says that he and Rudd really only got to know each other on their recent trip to Australia to promote Quantumania, given that he preferred to stay in character between takes on the vast sets and effects heavy scenes set in the eye-popping Quantum Realm.

“The second part of your brain is calculating the fact that he’s a really good guy,” says Majors of Rudd.

“The first part of the brain is trying to figure out how to destroy him in every scene.”

In addition to decades’ worth of comic books, Majors took inspiration from historical figures such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Julius Caesar to play Kang the Conqueror, a rapacious warrior hellbent on dominating the multiverse.

Part of his shock and awe approach on set was to blare loud music – from Stevie Wonder to Kanye West and, particularly, the song 9mm by Power-Haus – to announce his arrival every day.

Paul Rudd and Jonathan Majors at the London premiere of Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania this month. Picture: Getty Images

“He had a Kang play list,” recalls Reed.

“He does this for all his characters in every movie, but the Kang play list puts everybody on guard in a great way. It throws some people off balance but it is a pronouncement – Kang is here, so get your s--t together.”

When Iron Man launched the MCU in 2008, Majors was still in his late teens. Acting was a means of escape for the young man who had endured a rough childhood in Texas before studying drama, first at the University Of North Carolina School of the Arts, followed by a Master of Fine Arts at the prestigious Yale School of Drama.

Never in a million years did he think he’d be an integral part of the fantastical world of superheroes in the most successful film franchise ever.

“Oh, wow, buddy, I went the drama school route you know?,” he says when asked about his early ambitions.

“So our plans and focus were ‘you have to be a big theatre star’. You have to do Broadway, off-Broadway, regional theatre – and you make your bones that way. I never thought I’d be in films, especially around the advent of the MCU.”

But, he says, the skills and repertoire he learned back then treading the boards have served him well as his star his risen in Hollywood.

Chekhov and Ibsen, he says, are like independent films and Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies have “the scale and emotional frequency of a Marvel movie”.

“And the green screen,” he adds, “I mean, that’s what we call the fourth wall back on the boards. So, it’s quite transferable.”

He also credits his blue-collar background for giving him a fierce work ethic that will see him release four movies in five months: war biopic Devotion, bodybuilding drama Magazine Dreams (out now on Netflix), Quantumania and Creed III, which hits cinemas globally next week.

“To me there’s something always curious about a profession where you just do it for four months of the year and then don’t, that just seems crazy,” he says.

“So, my work ethic and my cultural background, I’m a worker. I also have this bug bite, this ant bite, this wasp sting of wanting to be an actor.”

Jonathan Majors stars as Damian Anderson in Creed III.

Majors also applied his laser-like focus and single-mindedness to get into top physical shape for Creed III. In the third film in the Rocky spin-off franchise, Majors trained for eight months to play boxer Damien Anderson, the childhood friend turned ex-con, who becomes fierce rival of Michael B. Jordan’s (who also directs) title character.

The physicality of the role was one of many things Majors found fascinating about playing Damian when he was “cold-called” by Jordan for the role. He was determined that by the time filming came around, he would walk, talk and look like a fighter.

“I’ve never played a character that was so communicative with their body in the way Dame is, the way you can learn about him solely from his body language and the way he moves,” Majors says. “I had always been athletic, I used to play football, basketball, and run cross country. I had a best friend growing up in my neighbourhood in Texas who was a boxer, and I’d watch him and kind of try to copy what he was doing. He was the real deal, a Golden Gloves competitor. I followed him to the gym and tried it. And I would think to myself, ‘You got it.’ It wasn’t until years later, where I was like, ‘Oh, you don’t got it!’.”

Majors would begin his day at 4am with his two Malinois dogs and then go for a 5km run at 5am, before fronting up for his official fight training and choreography with stunt co-ordinator Clayton Barber, where he would lift weights, run, jump rope and work the bags.

Actors Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors perform prior to the 2023 NBA All Star KIA Skills Challenge at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City, Utah, last week. Picture: Alex Goodlett/Getty Images

“I was shadow boxing with weights to build the muscle or condition the muscle,” he says. “There was a lot of core work – the shirts are coming off so it has to be right.”

In the afternoons he’d head to his own gym in East Los Angeles for “prison workouts”, consisting of bench press, squats, curls and the like to get the chiselled physique and intensity that would make his fight scenes with Jordan visceral and brutal.

“I remember the first time me and Mike got in the ring to do it,” Majors says of training with Jordan.

“Clay pulled me aside and said ‘hey, we don’t have to go that hard’ but that’s the only way I know how to go. We didn’t lift all those weights for nothing.”

All the hard work paid off, with Majors’ jacked physique and bulging biceps rivalling Chris Hemsworth for the MCU’s biggest guns. And given Kang is expected to be front and centre for the next two Avengers movies, the prospect of a face-off against the Aussie actor’s equally buff Thor is a tantalising one.

“That could definitely happen in his world because what Chris does, and his range in the comedy and the drama and the adventure, Kang could show up and they could maybe have a gun show,” Majors laughs.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in cinemas now. Creed III opens on March 2.

Originally published as Jonathan Majors’ Ant-Man villain brings darker tone to the Marvel franchise