Last Wednesday's episode of Loki, "Journey Into Mystery," introduced us to a lot of Loki Variants, including DeObia Oparei's Boastful Loki. He had plenty of memorable moments, including fighting off Alligator Loki - who blatantly went for his fellow God of Mischief's hand - and a clash with Tom Hiddleston's evil President Loki after he betrayed Kid Loki in the hope of becoming The Void's new King.
On Saturday, we were fortunate enough to catch up with DeObia to ask him about his two pivotal scenes with those Variants. As you might expect, it sounds like the actor had an absolute blast, particularly when it came to his unexpected alligator co-star (a blue dummy was used on set).
Here's an excerpt from our conversation along with the full interview for your viewing pleasure:
I hate to take the spotlight from you, but Alligator Loki is something everyone has been talking about and I know you get quite a pivotal scene with him where you’re wrestling with what we’ve [now] seen was a blue doll thanks to Kate [Herron]. What was that like for you, as I feel it must have been a very weird day on set?
It was! [Laughs] It was a weird day on set. This alligator...he was an upstager! It was such good fun shooting those scenes. Like I said, Kate just infects the set and it’s so relaxed, so you’re able to do your best work. The alligator was tricky. It was kind of tricky to get in there and make it work. When I looked at it, I was like, ‘Wow, it really came off well!’
I feel like your Loki got off lucky because I was rewatching the episode this morning and the alligator definitely went for [Boastful Loki’s] hand and, of course, we know what happens to the other Loki, so that was a near miss!
Totally, totally lucky, yeah!
It must have been quite an experience shooting those scenes with Tom playing President Loki as well...
It was so good, and he did a really sweet thing. We had the whole fight sequence and he wasn’t in it, he was actually shooting something else, but then he ran and, this was so sweet, jumped into my fight sequence. It was just a really great thing to do and was a lovely thing with an actor supporting another actor and acknowledging that they’re doing great work. I’ve never experienced that before and it just touched my heart.
Exploring that duplicitous nature of Loki must have also been great? Seeing him turn on Kid Loki and Classic Loki and being the ‘bad’ one of the bunch must have been fun.
Yes, it was! It was definitely fun. I think in terms of being the God of Mischief, that was so in line with who Lokis are and I guess I was the one who had to do the dirty!
Keep checking back here for more from our interview with the Boastful Loki actor, and make sure to find him on Twitter @DeObia and Instagram @deobia.oparei (where he's recently shared plenty of fun behind-the-scenes content from the Disney+ series since making his MCU debut).