Director Travis Knight and star Nicholas Galitzine break down the scene involving He-Man royalty.

Everything you need to know about that big Masters of the Universe cameo

Director Travis Knight and star Nicholas Galitzine break down the scene involving He-Man royalty.

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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June 5, 2026 8:34 p.m. ET

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Nicholas Galitzine in 'Masters of the Universe'. Credit:

Amazon MGM Studios

- *Masters of the Universe* director Travis Knight details how he landed a big cameo for his new movie.

- Star Nicholas Galiztine shares what he loves most about the moment between He-Man and this character.

- The actor contributed his own ideas for the scene, to "make it more him."

**This article contains spoilers about *Masters of the Universe*.**

Nicholas Galitzine had a big idea for *Masters of the Universe*, where he plays the hero, Prince Adam/He-Man.

"I seem to remember sort of quite brightly going to [director Travis Knight] and going, 'You know what would be a great idea, is if we had Dolph Lundgren in the movie,'" the actor, referring to the star of the 1987 movie *Masters of the Universe*, tells **. "And he kind of looked at me like, 'Yeah, we've been planning something for...' like I had come up with this really novel [concept]. That's the thing about Travis; he's always many steps ahead of me."

It was a great idea, clearly; Lundgren does indeed make a brief cameo in the movie (in theaters now), as part of a montage that shows Adam's life on Earth.

"We're showcasing, essentially, what is a day in the life of Adam and the recurring grind of his life and how it's a pretty unsatisfying life, and you can see why he longs to get back to home, why he would want to get back to Eternia and the world he left behind," Knight explains. So we see him at his corporate HR job and at home with his rom-com-loving roommate, even at the gym, "because of what that represents. He-Man is all about giant muscles, and one of the things that we play with is this notion of machismo. So we wanted to see [Adam] at the gym working out."

Dolph Lundgren in 1987's 'Masters of the Universe'; Nicholas Galitzine in 2026's 'Masters of the Universe'.

Everett; Amazon

That's where he meets Lundgren, whose character (credited as Macho-Man) is clearly a bit of a gym rat — so Adam (er, Galitzine?) asks him for advice, as the "new guy"...at the gym (and, sure, as the new He-Man). Lundgren shares some wise words about how being a man is more than muscles, and about getting in front of himself — which doesn't make sense at the time, but will later.

As he walks away, he turns to Adam, bidding him a "good journey," a phrase his He-Man said to characters in the original movie.

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"Originally, it was a much longer scene where we saw a lot of different aspects inside the scene, and then he has his exchange with Dolph, and that also was originally a significantly longer scene," Knight says. "You plan these things, and as you start putting the movie together, a movie is a time-based art. You only have so much time to tell the story that you're telling. And so that means along the way, you have to cut a lot of things that you love. But you really get down to the essence of what that interaction is, and to me, it's about Dolph giving this young man at the beginning of his journey a little bit of life advice, a little hard-fought wisdom. And then when you see later in the movie how that comes back around and how that affects things, I think it's absolutely joyful."

Filming of the scene happened fairly early in production, Knight says. "It was a cool way to kick off. It gave us a little bit of nitroglycerin as we're starting the production." A big jolt that the director wasn't sure would actually happen.

Nicholas Galitzine and Dolph Lundgren at the 'Masters of the Universe' premiere after party.

Jesse Grant/Getty

"I never knew that I'd be able to convince Dolph Lundgren to be in our movie. I certainly had hoped that we could get Dolph to be in the movie, and it was something that I'd been working for for a long time," Knight explains. When they finally connected, and Knight shared his vision for the cameo, Lundgren, he says, had his own thoughts on "ways we could tweak it and modify it that would make it more him.... It was so cool on the day to have the two big screen cinematic He-Men in the same space."

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Galitzine considers them "lucky" that Lundgren wanted to be part of the movie. "I also think in the way we did it, it's humorous, but it's got a bit of a sort of a meta quality to it," Galitzine says. "I end up sort of saying the lines that he says to me in my war seminar [later in the movie]. I hope Dolph feels this way, but there was a very real passing of the torch, which felt very special, certainly for me."

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Source: “EW Sci-Fi”