Momoa was actually in a different country when wife Lisa Bonet went into labor.

In 2007, Jason Momoa almost lived every new father’s worst nightmare when his then-girlfriend Lisa Bonet went into labor with their first child while he was filming in Canada.

Bonet’s water broke early in the morning and Momoa was asleep—in a different country. “I missed seventy calls,” Momoa told Esquire in a new interview. “So I woke up and freaked the f—k out.” Yep, the Aquaman star almost slept right through the birth of his first kid!

Momoa hustled to the airport and, with a stroke of luck, he got the last seat on the plane. After the flight he was off to the races. “I come barreling out of the terminal, like the Predator, like, ‘GET OUT OF THE WAY!’” he told Esquire. “I’m running through the airport, and I get in the car. I go, like, ‘Dude, I don’t care, run all the lights… I’ll pay for everything.’”

Momoa made it just in time to welcome his daughter Lola Iolani. “I had about two hours with her in the tub, and my baby girl was born,” he said. “Oh, and this is the best part! Benjamin Bratt was on the plane! He was in first class. And when I ran past him, I’m like, Oh, shit, Benjamin Bratt! And he was like, ‘Go, go, go.’”

Thank goodness he made it in time: Family is everything to the sculpted 6’4” actor, who later welcomed son Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa with Bonet in 2008.

“I really can’t tell you what the hell I was doing before I had kids,” he told Men’s Health in 2017. “Just f—king off. Wasting time. I think I was pretty reckless and definitely a bit out of control. Now I’m more focused. I probably love myself more and take care of myself more because I want to stick around.”

“I want to be remembered as, I hope, an amazing husband and a great father,” he continued. “My kids are my greatest piece of art. If I can pump them full of amazing stuff and surround them with beautiful art and music, then I’m going to live out my life watching them. They’re already way smarter and just way better than me.”

“God, I love it,” he said. “It’s beautiful. I want it to be the greatest thing I ever do: make good humans.”

When Momoa isn’t away filming, he’s spending time with his kids and wife Bonet, who he called his “dream girl” and childhood crush. “If someone says something isn’t possible, I’m like, ‘Listen here, I married Lisa Bonet. Anything is f—king possible,’” he told Esquire.

The Game of Thrones star and Bonet began dating in 2005 and officially tied the knot in 2017. “The way you look at me. f—king love you woman. My everything ,” he captioned a rare post of the actress on Instagram.

“She’s very, very, very private,” Momoa told Esquire. But she’s also the boss. On the set of his new Apple TV+ show See, Momoa took the German Shepard puppy home with him, naming him Rama.

Will he get to keep the dog? “It’s up to Mama,” Momoa told Esquire. “Mama is the boss—everyone knows that.” The pup is pretty cute. Jason and Rama, just flash your puppy dog eyes together at the same time, and she’ll have to budge. Who could say no to those faces?!