Stars Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Mendes, director Travis Knight, and the producing team unpack the movie’s long road to theaters and their heroes’ journey.

Finding their power: How Masters of the Universe created a He-Man and Teela for a new generation

Stars Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Mendes, director Travis Knight, and the producing team unpack the movie's long road to theaters and their heroes' journey.

By Gerrad Hall

Gerrad Hall

Gerrad Hall is an editorial director at **, overseeing movie, awards, and music coverage. He is also host of The Awardist podcast, and has cohosted EW’s live Oscars, Emmys, SAG, and Grammys red carpet shows. He has appeared on Good Morning America, The Talk, Access Hollywood, Extra!, and other talk shows, delivering the latest news on pop culture and entertainment.

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April 14, 2026 12:00 p.m. ET

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Nicholas Galitzine has important business to tend to. Walking through a fantastical world of large trees and vibrantly colored plants and flowers, he navigates with purpose through the massive Stage 10 at London's Sky Studios. He arrives at a corner of the set that seems light-years away from the foliage behind him and gets to work: settling in at a weight machine, getting in several reps to pump up his bulging biceps that already resemble those of a superhero.**** It makes sense, because that's exactly who he's playing. Decked out in nothing but a metal harness and arm guards, a leather Roman Gladiator skirt, warrior boots, and bronzed, glistening skin, Galitzine — who rose to prominence the past few years as Prince Henry in the enormously popular adaptation of gay love story *Red, White & Royal Blue*, and pop star Hayes Campbell in the romantic drama *The Idea of You* — is starring as Prince Adam in his biggest project yet, the action-packed sword-and-scorcery adaptation *Masters of the Universe*. The West London native has bulked up to play the hero of Eternia, a technologically advanced and magic-filled planet ruled by his character's father, King Randor (James Purefoy), and Earth-born mother, Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley).

"Truthfully, I feel like I learned a lot about myself and how far I was willing to push myself and really suffering for it," Galitzine tells ** of his training regimen, working with celebrity personal trainer David Kingsbury, who's also helped sculpt Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, Chris Hemsworth, and more. "And it took a really, really long time. It's really not for the faint of heart. This is something that you need to do full-time for six months minimum, but I'm really happy."

In this new movie (in theaters June 5), we learn how Adam finds his powers and transforms from a meek pacifist — sent to Earth as a child by his mother to protect him from the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto), who's attacking Eternia's capital, Eternos, and their home, Castle Grayskull — into the iconic He-Man.

Touted as the "most powerful man in the Universe," the character has been beloved by fans since his introduction in 1982, first as the centerpiece of a hugely successful line of Mattel action figures and accompanying minicomics that inspired a 130-episode Filmation animated series, and even through a critically panned 1987 movie starring Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, and Courteney Cox.

On this mid-May morning, Galitzine is filming a scene in Eternia's enchanted forest with Camila Mendes. The *Riverdale* alum plays Adam's childhood friend and skilled royal guard Teela, who was sent to Earth to find Adam and teleport him back home. In today's scene, Teela's Talon Fighter-inspired ship (a nod to the vintage cartoon vehicle) has crashed following a high-flying showdown with Skeletor's army. While the film crew resets and adjusts some equipment, Galitzine chats with EW about his complicated body transformation — which took a while to get right, and involved a lot of bulking before cutting — and his barely there costume, which "is second nature now."

"It's a peculiar thing, being in a miniskirt and harness while everyone's fully dressed in puffer jackets and whatnot," Galitzine says nearly a year later, chatting with EW while on his way home after a day filming another movie, the back-from-the-presumed-dead thriller *The Return of Stanley Atwell*.

Camila Mendes as Teela and Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man in 'Masters of the Universel'.

Giles Keyte/Amazon MGM Studios

But he can laugh about it now, and he is.

"Obviously, it's such a personal journey for you, and you see your body every day," he reflects of his bulked-up physique, "and really it's not till people who've seen you six months prior then see you there — in Eternia, [Skeletor's home] Snake Mountain, Subternia, wherever it may be — you gain validation off of other people's reactions to it."

That includes producers Todd Black and Jason Blumenthal, the latter of whom Galitzine recalls being "quite emotional" upon seeing his physical progress. The duo, whose many credits include the *Equalizer* film franchise and *Being the Ricardos*, have had the movie rights to *Masters* for 18 years. Before getting it across the finish line with Amazon MGM Studios and Mattel Studios, they and filmmaking brothers Aaron and Adam Nee (*The Lost City*) were previously in development on a He-Man movie with Sony and then Netflix, which was also home to the kids-focused *He-Man and the Masters of the Universe* and Kevin Smith's animated *Masters of the Universe: Revelation* series.

But after a budget disagreement, the Netflix film fell apart, despite being "*really* close" to going into production in New Mexico, Black says.

Then a certain woman came along, who he says had a "huge" impact in finally making *Masters* happen: Barbie. The 2023 blockbuster and Best Picture Oscar nominee laid the groundwork for Mattel to take He-Man the extra mile (sans songs in this action-figure adaptation), with the help of two real-life women who were critical to getting Barbie out of the box and onto the big screen: Robbie Brenner, *Barbie* producer as president of Mattel Studios and chief content officer; and Courtenay Valenti, former Warner Bros. president of production and *Barbie* executive producer who's now Amazon MGM Studios' head of film.

Black had lunch with Valenti not long after she started at Amazon. That was a Thursday; she read the script over the weekend and on Sunday morning texted him, "I'm in. I love it."

"She's an incredible risk taker," Brenner says of her fellow producer. "She takes big, bold swings. She's got a lot of conviction in her decision-making and passion, and she's an amazing businesswoman as well."

Idris Elba as Duncan/Man-at-Arms and Nicholas Galitzine as Prince Adam/He-Man in 'Masters of the Universe'.

Giles Keyte/Amazon MGM Studios

Valenti, Brenner says, believes in He-Man as a four-quadrant movie, appealing to both male and female audiences, and those both over and under 25 — important demographics to secure to replicate some of that *Barbie* success.

"She got her whole group behind her, and they stepped up," Black recalls. "It happened really quickly, actually, like super quickly."

Blumenthal says everything finally "felt right…for the first time."

"Not that there were problems at the other studios," he adds. "They tried, we tried, we just couldn't figure out that last little piece that's invisible to many people, but it's the magic of actually having everybody on the same page and ready to make the same movie…. When Courtenay was sitting at that lunch, she said, 'I think I can make lightning strike twice.' She just did it with *Barbie*. She understood the market. She understood the nostalgia factor. She understood storytelling, and they f---ing hit it out of the park."

Now, they just had to find their He-Man (no stranger to lightning himself), a process Black and Blumenthal had gone through twice before. Despite trade reports, not to mention *To All the Boys I've Loved Before* star Noah Centineo's own confirmation on *The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon* that he had been cast in the Sony movie, and a January 2022 Mattel announcement that *West Side Story*'s Kyle Allen would star in the Netflix version, Black insists "nobody was ever cast…. When it was at Sony, there was a particular name that everybody liked who was of the moment — and [the same thing happened] at Netflix — but nothing ultimately."

Blumenthal chalks it up to not knowing "what our Adam really needed to be" — but he thinks it all worked out the way it was supposed to.

"Here's the real reality: Some of them had the body, some of them had the acting chops. I don't know anyone that could've done it the way Nick did it, because not only did he fully commit, his body transformation was 100-percent real," the producer says. "There are no tricks, there are no pills, there are no…nothing. I sat there with him for months. He did it old school."

Director Travis Knight (*Kubo and the Two Strings*) remembers not seeing Galitzine for several weeks during pre-production, but when they reconnected, the actor's transformation was obvious.

"He was training on set as we were in prep. And when I saw him again, I was like, *holy s---*," Knight — also the director of *Transformers* spinoff *Bumblebee*, another adaptation of a popular line of action figures and cartoons — recalls. "I couldn't believe how much he had changed. He had put on so much muscle in such a short period of time. Sometimes I'll look at photos back when I first met him, and it looks like a totally different dude."

At that initial meeting, Knight admits he wasn't "super aware of Nick's work. I'd seen some of his stuff," but of the actors who auditioned (they eventually narrowed casting down to Galiztine and two others), the director says he "knew pretty much immediately upon meeting Nick that, *Oh yeah, this is the dude*…. From our initial conversation, it was like, *Oh my God, this guy's perfect*."

Some of them had the body, some of them had the acting chops. I don't know anyone that could've done it the way Nick did it, because not only did he fully commit, his body transformation was 100-percent real."****—Producer Jason Blumenthal on Nicholas Galitzine's physical transformation to play He-Man

As a He-Man superfan since childhood — "I watched the cartoon. I played with the toys. I read the comics," Knight says. "To this day, I still have Adam's introductory speech committed to memory. I could recite it for you. I won't, but I could"— he knew exactly what he was looking for in someone to play his Adam.

"What we're asking in terms of performance from this actor is extraordinary. There's so many different things they have to play. And so that's why I knew that I just needed the actor. I needed the artist," explains the three-time Oscar nominee, who co-created Laika, the stop-motion animation studio behind *The Boxtrolls*, *Missing Link*, and *Kubo*. "It wasn't about finding the most jacked dude I could. It was about finding the person who could embody the spirit of this character that we were trying to create. And then hopefully we could find a way to get them jacked along the way."

Though the action figures didn't debut until '82, Mattel started developing the toys in 1976, when competitor Kenner Products secured the *Star Wars* toy line after Mattel CEO Ray Wagner passed on it. A group of Mattel designers was tasked with creating their own line for boys, eventually landing on Conan the Barbarian as partial inspiration. He-Man and Skeletor (the latter inspired by one Mattel toy engineer's own twisted childhood experience with a real human skeleton at a Long Beach, Calif., fun house) quickly gained their own legion of unique fighters — including Ram Man, Battle Cat, Mekaneck, Beast Man, Trap-Jaw, Stinkor, and many more.

"The characters were ridiculous. They were just bulging with muscles everywhere. They didn't look like your *Star Wars* toys. They looked totally different," Knight recalls.

And he found the animated series just as unique.

"I loved it. It was so weird. It was deranged, but delightful. It was such a strange combination of flavors: sci-fi, and fantasy, and muscle-bound beefcake dudes in furry knickers fighting guys with skulls for faces. It was just a really odd combination of things."

One of those things was He-Man's ability to summon strength via a sword and lightning — and the phrase, "By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!" — transforming himself from the goofy Prince Adam into his uber-strong alter ego to take down the bad guys.

"Even with that famous incantation that Adam would say, 'I have the power,' it's about power, it's about manliness. It's about all these things kind of commingling," he explains. "I thought that was really interesting. It was baked in the DNA right from the beginning."

That became the basis for Knight's movie, the script for which was written by his longtime collaborator at Laika, Chris Butler.

"The shape of the story was already there," Butler says of working off the story that had been crafted by the Nee Brothers and writer David Callaham for the previous studio attempts. "A lot of what Travis and I wanted it to be was to nod to the thing that we love so much as kids, take it back to its roots…. If Barbie was the toy for girls, He-Man was the toy for men. It was about might and power and being top dog. And so definitely thematically, I wanted to lean into that and what it means to be a man and what it means to be a human."

Knight recalls the mantra of the time: "Real men don't cry. Boys don't cry."

"If you express any kind of vulnerability, you must immediately punch a fence post to establish equilibrium," he says of growing up in that decade.

Knight saw this as a chance to examine how that mentality has changed: "It was a really interesting way for us to explore these things that are happening in our culture, for us to compare and contrast what that stuff meant in the '80s versus what that means now."

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And while He-Man has strength and muscle in spades, there is another side to him, one that Knight found more compelling.

"At the same time, he was talking about kindness. He was talking about friendship and compassion. He was somebody who cared. And he was essentially like a bronzed empathy coach in furry underpants," the director continues. "It was unique. It was different. And certainly for a kid like me —  I was a sensitive kid. I was an artist. I was kind of a weird guy, you might say, and I made friends slowly when I made them at all…. I was comfortable with my own company, and I had deep thoughts and deep feelings, but I had a hard time making those types of deep connections easily with others. And so that very notion that strength and sensitivity could commingle, it was seismic. It was like discovering you could own both a tank and a diary."

Nicholas Galitzine, director Travis Knight, and Camila Mendes on the set of 'Masters of the Universe'.

Giles Keyte/Amazon MGM Studios

Galitzine recognized that instantly in the story Knight and Butler set out to tell.

"Very rarely, you get a script and you understand the character immediately — you quite confidently feel like *I can embody this person*," he says. "This was like playing two characters, in a lot of ways. We're not reinventing the wheel necessarily, but the arc was so powerful. And I think as someone who grew up in a very masculine sphere of rugby but always felt like a really sensitive, emotionally intuitive person, I really did see myself in this character."

As a young boy in Eternos, Adam — along with all of the other children there, including Teela —was trained to be part of the Royal Guard by the king's Man-at-Arms, Duncan (Idris Elba), who also happens to be Teela's father.

Duncan "very much represents a different kind of man from a different era," says Knight. "It was critical to me that I approached each one of those characters and their points of view with sensitivity, without judgment. Duncan's a very different guy with very different ideas on these types of issues. But when you listen to what he says, he's not wrong about some of that stuff."

"Nor is Adam," the director continues of the diminutive young prince, who'd prefer to dance around, "making a fool out of himself" (his father, King Randor's words, not ours) rather than participate in arms training.

"We see that he is a little bit different in this world full of aggressively healthy buff people," Butler explains of Adam. "He's a bit of a weed. He doesn't feel like he belongs in this place, and there's a very good reason for that."

*Masters* doesn't spend much time with Randor and Marlena's young son before Skeletor's men attack, trying to get their hands on the Sword of Power, which would give Skeletor the strength to rule all of Eternia. So when Queen Marlena fears for her son's life, the Sorceress of Grayskull (Morena Baccarin) — who guards over the secrets and magic of the castle, including the sword — opens a portal to send Adam and the totem to Earth for protection. When he lands in Oklahoma, though, he's been separated from the sword, which has the ability to transmit his whereabouts to Eternia. Without it, he can't get home, and home can't find him.

Jared Leto as Skeletor in 'Masters of the Universe'.

Amazon MGM Studios

When we meet Adam as an adult, his home planet and sword are all he can talk about — humorously so — to the point that it gets in the way of both his personal life and his unfulfilling corporate HR job.

"[His life on Earth] is a little soulless, it's a little mundane, it's devoid of color and life. It's frustrating, because Adam feels like he sees the best in people, he wants the best for people, but it doesn't feel like any of that is reciprocated for him," Galitzine explains, adding that Adam has become an outcast, given his constant chatter about this planet no one believes is real. "What is it like to be a pariah from such a young age, and always be gaslit into thinking that there's something wrong with you, but also the feeling that you weren't really at home on your home planet either? So it's this feeling of not really belonging anywhere."

To protect himself, Adam forms a "cocoon to remove [himself] from the possibility of feeling and being disappointed and hoping," he continues. "Eventually, after 15 years, he's really a shadow of a person. He's lost hope. And so we meet him in quite a depressive sort of place."

But when an online search finally produces information on the sword's location, he sets out to retrieve it — in a physically comedic scene at a local comic book store, filled with vintage and new toys that include nods to other popular characters hailing from *Lord of the Rings*, *Transformers*, *Power Rangers*, Marvel, DC, and more. Once he's finally in possession of the sword — and, in turn, in contact with Eternia — it takes no time at all for Skeletor's minion, Beast Man, to track him down, ravaging the city in his attempt to secure the magical weapon. But Adam soon gets some help from his old friend Teela.

"She is a warrior. She's trained. She's much more physically adept than Adam is. Certainly, at the beginning of the movie, she's a better fighter, she's more acrobatic, she's smart, she's strategic in ways that Adam isn't,” Knight says of Teela. "But also, there is a deep empathy underneath her, like Adam. And I think that's the thing that binds them together, that they just see the world slightly differently. We see that in minor ways, and how she cares for her father, and how she believes in her father even after he spirals, and how she believes in Adam, who is showing no outward signs of being able to be the champion of Graykull. She believes in him."

While Adam has been on Earth, Eternos — no longer ruled by Randor and Marlena — has fallen into ruin after being destroyed by Skeletor. Teela's father, Duncan, blames himself for not being able to protect the royals and save the Eternians.

Elba admits he wasn't familiar with Duncan from the cartoons, outside of him being "strong, and he had that incredible mustache," he says. So his focus was on the script and what it was honoring, which is the "family history and his job as the Man-at-Arms. I wanted to bring a human story to Duncan, because he has a really lovely father-daughter story that I really wanted to bring some color to."

Idris Elba as Duncan/Man-at-Arms in 'Masters of the Universe'.

Giles Keyte/Amazon MGM Studios

That storyline was also a big touchstone for Mendes.

"It's hard to talk about Teela without talking about her relationship to her father, because I feel like so much of who she is has to do with how she was, I guess, let down as a kid," she explains. "And I feel like that really built this outer wall around her that's sort of like shielding this inner sensitivity. She's affected by toxic masculinity just as much as the men in the film. And I think she's sort of adopted masculinity to protect herself in this very masculine world. It's how she survives. She's in survival mode, and has been for a very long time."

While Mendes has been into fitness for years, playing Teela required a far more intense gym routine.

"Like Nick, Cami threw herself into it," says Knight. "She also transformed her body. She hit the weights hard. She did the stunt choreography. She did the wirework. Both of those two were so goddamn impressive."

"Normally, people don't put enough emphasis on the women being strong in these kinds of movies," adds Mendes. "You always see a really thin woman who's supposed to be this pillar of strength. And I'm like, *Why is it that the men get to put on muscle and be all strong and heroic, but we still have to be lean and thin?* And I really wanted to go for it."

That said, conveying Teela's quiet internal strength was equally important.

"I feel like I could bring a great depth of feeling to her that you would see through the strong exterior," says the actress. "You don't get to see her really let her walls down too much in the film, so you have to be able to see it without her saying it."

On a tour of *Masters*' London sets, where an action scene was filmed the day prior, the results of everyone's various strengths are obvious: A palace hallway is still in shambles, with stone columns crumbled, windows broken. On a huge outdoor backlot set, statues of past kings are toppled and destroyed. The battle sequences are extensive and exciting (as evidenced by He-Man;a takedown of several baddies in the movie's first two trailers), and Knight's cast was right there in the thick of that action, performing most stunts themselves — insurance permitting, of course.

"I don't know if it was expected [of me], but I expected it of myself," Galitzine admits.

So he trained with stunt coordinator Liang Yang (famous for the *Mission: Impossible — Fallout* bathroom fight sequence) in stunt fighting and choreography, as well as acrobatic wirework.

"He's a certified badass, grew up in the Chinese circus — you can't get more tough than that," the actor says in admiration of Yang.

"I feel really like I was constantly in search of his validation, because he's such a badass," Galitzine continues. "But there's obviously the cliché about the actor who always wants to do his own stunts. And I got very lucky that Jonny [James], my stunt double, was so brilliant and really trained me. And we spent many, many, many hours for months together brainstorming how we could make it feel grounded in how He-Man would move."

Mendes took a similar approach, training for three months prior to the shoot so she could showcase Teela's skills herself.

“Part of it felt like my sort of method approach to being Teela," she explains. "Teela has endured a lot of training, so in my training process, I felt like I was becoming Teela, because I know how much she had to train to be where she is."

Camila Mendes as Teela in 'Masters of the Universe'.

Giles Keyte/Amazon MGM Studios

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But *Masters of the Universe*, like the early Filmation animated series, has an important secret ingredient: humor. Galitzine recalls not being ready for the laughs when he first read the script.

"That was the thing that really struck me," he says. "I can't remember how old I must've been, but watching the first *Guardians of the Galaxy*, and how James Gunn was able to thread that needle between the emotionality and the humor, it felt both nostalgic and new."

Brenner remembers audiences similarly not quite knowing what they were going to get with *Barbie*.

"People didn't know exactly what this movie is [before they saw it]," she says. "Is this movie for girls? Is it for young girls? Older? But no, it's [for everyone], and Greta Gerwig said that from the beginning." And Brenner feels the same about *Masters*.

"People don't know exactly what it is. *It's got this kind of weird, crazy tone to it. Is it *Guardians*? What is it exactly?*" she muses. "But what's so incredible and unique about it is, in a world where we have so many sword-and-sandal movies, or so many things that feel so similar, this really has a singular and authentic and unique look and feel and voice and humor."

*Masters* is in on the joke — self-aware and self-deprecating in the funniest ways, from how it addresses character names to some of those characters' corny personalities, including the evil Skeletor's immature need for gratification from his followers, often to their annoyance.

"Tone was everything for us," Black says of Knight and the cast's tightrope walk between action, humor, and heart.

Brenner thinks the key is how the movie "doesn't take itself too seriously. We're living at a time where everybody is very serious about everything. There's a lot going on in the world…. It's just funny, and it's fun and not insulting. And it has everything wrapped up in one, which I think is so exciting, and so different about it. That's what makes it bold, and that's what makes it interesting."

Blumenthal admits Galitzine's comedy chops were an unexpected bonus.

"I knew how charming he is, and the girls loved him, and I know he could sing," he says, "but he's actually really funny in a way that is real. Like, he's not trying to make a joke. It's in-the-moment funny. I think that'' what makes him rootable from day one, because he's relatable."

Maybe he should be called HeHeHe-Man.

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