'He said something about a shaman and people suffering a transformation, but something went wrong with the Zoom connection and it froze for about five minutes in the middle of his speech,' Huerta said. Speaking to Empire for the magazine's November 2022 issue ( now on sale), Huerta admitted that he wasn't even sure what the role was going to be due to a technical glitch on his initial call with the director. Talk about being thrown into the deep end! 'I never drowned before, so that's not a lie.'

If you're going to be playing the mighty ruler of an underwater kingdom in a big studio blockbuster, then you should at least know how to doggy paddle, right? Not exactly! When filmmaker Ryan Coogler offered Tenoch Huerta the once-in-a-lifetime role of Namor the Sub-Mariner in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the actor didn't know how to swim.Ĭoogler - who returned to direct and co-write the sequel - asked about his skills in the water, to which Huerta provided a clever response rooted in semantics: 'I've never drowned before,' he cheekily recalled during an interview for Entertainment Weekly's big preview article on the hotly-anticipated Marvel Cinematic Universe film. 'I never lie!' added the veteran of Narcos and The Forever Purge.

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