JONATHAN MAJORS does not like to take it easy. If you ask him to become a pilot, a professional boxer, or a bodybuilder for a role, the 33-year-old actor will commit to several months of brutal cardio, strength training, and mental conditioning until his muscles bulge and he fails his way to perfection. By the time he’s ready to perform, he will have become who he needs to be. “If I’m going to bench-press 250 in a film, I need to be able to bench-press 275 a few times,” he says, then corrects himself: “305 a few times.”
On set, it’s the same story. Hand him fake weights for a scene and he’ll look at you with incredulity and tell you in the politest, sincerest tone, “You’re fucking kidding me,” as he did while playing two of the most physically demanding roles of his career: a rough-edged boxer in the latest installment of the Rocky Cinematic Universe, Creed III, and an asocial bodybuilder in the dark drama Magazine Dreams. For both upcoming projects, Majors lifted real weights during filming.
“I will do this all day. We are not putting fake weights on. I haven’t been training for the past three months to get here and use Styrofoam,” Majors says on a hot and sunny day in London. “Put these fucking weights on so we can lift it, so you can shoot it, so I can tell the story.” Respectfully, anything less is “like putting fake tears in your eyes. Or putting fake sweat on you. This is it. This is it! Let’s go.” He laughs.
It’s a little past 8:00 a.m. on Hampstead Heath, and the shutters of Kenwood House aren’t yet open to visitors. Majors is on a bench overlooking the sprawling 17th-century manor. Despite the heat, the Texas-bred actor is wearing sweatpants and a pinstripe button-up under a vest. The best guess is that he’s in London filming a Marvel title. He won’t say. A year ago, Majors debuted as the demented He Who Remains in the season. That cameo has Marvel fans giddy about what he will accomplish as the Avengers’ next significant threat, Kang the Conqueror.
