Photo: Apple TV+
He may have been Aquaman on screen, but the real-life Jason Momoa is still a terrestrial being. On a recent episode of the podcast Smartless, the Hawai’ian actor recounted a near-death experience he had while surfing in Maui, where he ended up being rescued by none other than Laird Hamilton.
As Momoa told podcast hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, the incident took place when he was a teenager, while he was spending the summer with his father’s family in Hawaii and working at a family surf shop. On the day in question, Momoa was with Dave Kalama, Joe Flanagan and Hamilton, and had embarked on a 13-mile paddle that started at Jaws, when his leash snapped and he found himself boardless in heavy water.
“I was trained pretty well, so it was fine,” he explained. “I took quite a few on the head. They were pretty big, like, 10-foot Hawaiian waves, but I’m literally probably a half-mile offshore. Actually, this place is called Shitfucks, and it’s literally because there’s all this water that just pulls you out and you just get hit with these waves. So I was stuck in this crazy spot.”
However, even with his experience in open water, things started to get dicey quickly. “Unknown to me, I was really on the outer reef,” he continued. “I had my paddle and I was waving it, and they couldn’t see me.”
Though Hamilton was already paddling back to retrieve him, it was a long route and Momoa found himself losing strength. “I was out there for a while and I couldn’t see anyone coming to get me. I couldn’t move anymore, and my arms and my legs gave up… I couldn’t move my arms anymore and I bubbled down. I literally gave up and I’m screaming inside, and my foot just hits the outer reef.”
That outer reef ended up being his savior, though. “I don’t know if it was a fucking whale or could be just one rock, but I just reached down, grabbed it, I jump up, I get hit by another wave, and I dig my feet into the coral,” he continued. “I’m literally in the middle of the ocean. I could barely put my lips above just to breathe and get a break. Then I still stayed out there for 10 minutes. I was hanging on the side of this reef. Then I hear Laird come from behind, and he’s on my board, towing his board. I get on and he’s like ‘Are you alright?’ and I’m like ‘No.'”
That was far from the end, though. Momoa, exhausted and bleeding, still had to paddle seven miles back to shore. Eventually he did make it, though, and lived to tell the tale.
