The cast, character by character

The full cast list, at a glance

Every actor in the 2026 He-Man movie, principals first. Each name is covered in full further down, along with the supporting Masters, Skeletor's side, the voice cast and the crew.

Also in the film: Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson as Malcolm / Fisto, Jon Xue Zhang as Ram Man, James Wilkinson as Mekaneck, Sam C. Wilson as Trap Jaw, Kojo Attah as Tri-Klops, James Apps as Spikor, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson as Goat Man.

The principals

Prince Adam / He-Man

Nicholas Galitzine

Raised on Earth with no memory of Eternia. Invents the name He-Man as a child and takes it for real in the epilogue.

Skeletor

Jared Leto

A practical muscle suit built by Barrie Gower with a CG skull composited on top. Played deep and theatrical rather than nasal.

Teela

Camila Mendes

Duncan’s adopted daughter and the resistance fighter who tracks Adam down on Earth. Ahead of him as a warrior for most of the film.

Duncan / Man-At-Arms

Idris Elba

Chief of the Royal Guard, gravely wounded by Trap Jaw in the opening and given a rematch in the finale.

Evil-Lyn

Alison Brie

Skeletor’s sorceress. Closes the entire film by walking off with his skull.

The Sorceress

Morena Baccarin

Opens the portal that sends infant Adam to Earth, and delivers the film’s central revelation about where the power actually lives.

Roboto

Kristen Wiig

Rewritten as female for this film. Found imprisoned, wrecked in the finale, rebuilt by Duncan in the epilogue.

King Randor

James Purefoy

Adam’s father, taken in the fall of Eternos and killed at Snake Mountain before the climax.

Queen Marlena

Charlotte Riley

Adam’s mother. Rules Eternos in the epilogue and speaks the line that sets up the She-Ra reveal.

How this cast was actually hired

Casting looks inevitable once it is done, yet the record on this one is anything but. Travis Knight took over a project on which two other actors had already been announced to the trades as He-Man, in 2019 and again in 2022, and neither of them ever stood on a set as the character. Asked directly about that inheritance, he answered about the calendar rather than the men.

"People have been trying to make the Masters of the Universe movie for eighteen years, I think. This movie is old enough to vote. It's had a long gestation period. When I came aboard, there was nobody attached to it. They'd had so many people attached to it over those years. Screenwriters and directors and various actors."

Travis Knight, Geeks of Color, June 2, 2026

Nicholas Galitzine was hired on May 29, 2024, before a single other part was filled, and Knight has been unusually plain about why that was the hire he could not afford to get wrong.

"The obvious thing is, oh, you're a movie about He-Man, you've got to find some guy who's jacked. Rippling pectorals and six-pack abs and giant cannon arms. To me, that wasn't really the point of any of it. I needed to find a body. I needed to find a soul. ... With Nick, when I worked with him, we did some scene work together, and I saw he can do absolutely anything."

Travis Knight, Geeks of Color, June 2, 2026

Knight hired the actor first and asked for the physique afterwards. Galitzine spent the best part of a year building it, and Knight named the method on the record rather than leaving it at "training".

"But he did not look like He-Man. So we had to ask, okay, could you possibly be someone who's the most powerful man on Earth? To his great credit, he did it the hard way. He didn't go on gear. He didn't go on steroids like some of these cats do."

Travis Knight, Geeks of Color, June 2, 2026

Galitzine posted on the day the casting broke, and Deadline carried it: "It has been a dream for so long to play someone of his heart, humour and heroism, I cannot wait to get started." Thirteen months later, on the last day of the shoot, he posted again, and Variety carried that one: "It has been an honour shouldering the responsibility of playing Adam and He-Man. It's been the role of a lifetime and I put everything into it." Both are reproduced as those outlets printed them.

Jared Leto arrived from the opposite direction, because nobody went looking for him. Knight has said that Leto approached the production about Skeletor rather than the other way round, and that the reason was plain fandom, since he grew up with the character in the eighties and turned up with a view about him. The director's own condition was on the face, and it settled a design argument the project had been having with itself through earlier drafts, some of which had put Skeletor in a golden mask instead.

"Skeletor has a skull face," ... "That's just the way it is. It's a living, talking, emoting skull, and that's that."

Travis Knight to Empire, February 2026

Camila Mendes was announced on August 15, 2024, and hers is the best documented audition on the film. She has said the process was long, but what finally landed it was a chemistry read with Galitzine: improvised, and by her own account enjoyable. What she has said about wanting the part is more interesting than the mechanics of getting it.

"I applaud Travis for seeing that in me," ... "because some other directors might see somebody who played a spoiled rich bitch on a teen show and go, she's not right for this. She doesn't do that. But I feel like he saw the Teela in me. And I knew I saw the Teela in me, but it was important that the people on the other side saw the Teela in me. I'm just so grateful that he took that chance."

Camila Mendes, Geeks of Color, June 4, 2026

Idris Elba was set in a Deadline exclusive on November 22, 2024, and the thing that got him there was not the screenplay. He has been clear that he met the character in a toy aisle rather than on a screen, and he has said exactly why those particular toys were the ones in his house.

"My parents couldn't afford the Star Wars toys, and the He-Man toys were cheaper, because it wasn't as big. So I had He-Man, She-Ra, Battle Cat…"

Idris Elba to Empire, February 6, 2026

Alison Brie was announced on September 4, 2024 and has described her first meetings with Knight as a negotiation over how Evil-Lyn should feel about Skeletor rather than as an audition. It shows in the finished film, where the best material those two have together is a partnership coming apart. Morena Baccarin followed on February 10, 2025, alongside Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson as Fisto, and arrived with the mythology already in place, having spent a good part of her childhood playing He-Man and She-Ra with her brother.

For the last three principals the public record stops dead. James Purefoy and Charlotte Riley were announced together on February 11, 2025 as Adam's parents, and Kristen Wiig was announced as Roboto on August 15, 2025, two months after the shoot wrapped. Nobody involved has said on the record how any of those three came about, but we would rather leave the gap showing than fill it in.

The dated record

Every row is a trade announcement with a byline and a date on it.

The He-Men who never were

Who was going to play He-Man before Nicholas Galitzine? There are four answers, and which one you get depends entirely on the year you asked. Two of the four were formally cast by a studio, announced in the trades and photographed talking about the training, and then the films they had been cast in stopped existing around them.

1. 2015

   Mike O’Hearn. The bodybuilder announced he was training for the part during the Sony years. It turned out to be a joke, and no studio had cast anyone.

2. June 2016

   Kellan Lutz. Met director McG about the role and posted about it, but was never cast and never officially attached. McG confirmed afterwards that no decision had been made.

3. March 2019 to April 2021

   Noah Centineo. Reported in talks by TheWrap in March 2019 and confirmed by the actor himself that April. Sony pulled the film from its calendar in January 2020, and his rep confirmed his exit fifteen months later without giving a reason.

4. January 2022 to January 2024

   Kyle Allen. Cast as Prince Adam when the project moved to Netflix, and by October 2022 he was training six hours a day for it. Netflix cancelled the film in July 2023 after a reported thirty million dollars of development. No studio ever announced his departure; he confirmed it himself, in a reply to a comment on Instagram.

Kyle Allen's exit is worth reading closely. Netflix cast him in a press release and Deadline carried it the same morning; by October 2022 he was telling interviewers he trained six hours a day. When the film was cancelled the following July, no statement about him followed, and the confirmation that he was no longer playing He-Man came from Allen himself, in a reply under someone else's Instagram comment. Noah Centineo's exit was handled the same way, through his representative to Collider rather than through Sony.

Both of those castings were announced before their films had a green light that held. Knight's version had a release date, a studio and a shooting schedule before Galitzine signed, and the actor then had a year to grow into a part he did not yet look like while the rest of Eternia was filled in around him.

Everyone who has played these characters

These parts have been handed on repeatedly since 1983. He-Man and Skeletor have had five performers each. Here is who had each one before, from the 1983 Filmation series through the Cannon film and the modern Netflix run to this year's cast. Where a cell reads "Not yet verified" we have not confirmed that credit against the on-screen titles, and we would rather say so than guess.

A single-film cast list will not show you what that table does. Linda Gary voiced Teela, Evil-Lyn, the Sorceress and Queen Marlena on the Filmation show, parts that this film gives to Camila Mendes, Alison Brie, Morena Baccarin and Charlotte Riley. Alan Oppenheimer had six credited roles on the same series: Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, Cringer and Battle Cat, Mer-Man, Buzz-Off and Roboto. The hero's mentor and the villain who maims him share a performer. And Meg Foster, the 1987 film's Evil-Lyn, came back to the franchise nearly forty years later to voice Motherboard in Revolution.

Notes. The 2002 Mike Young Productions series is not broken out above because we have verified only part of its cast: Cam Clarke voiced He-Man and Prince Adam, Brian Dobson voiced Skeletor and Keldor, and Christopher Judge voiced Zodak. The rest is in curation. Orko has no counterpart in the 1987 film, where Gwildor, played by Billy Barty, was invented to take the comic sidekick role instead. Sarah Michelle Gellar played Teela in Revelation and Melissa Benoist took the part for Revolution. Jon Cypher, the 1987 Man-At-Arms, died on August 3, 2026, aged 94. The full Filmation credits, including the sixteen characters Filmation co-founder Lou Scheimer voiced under the pseudonym "Erik Gunden", are on our voice cast archive, and the Cannon film has its own hub.

One more, for the collectors. In August 2012 Dolph Lundgren discussed a possible role as King Randor in the Sony version of this film, which never progressed to a casting. The part went to James Purefoy fourteen years later, and Lundgren is in the 2026 film regardless, as a gym-goer credited on screen as "Macho Man".

The Masters

All three carry nicknames a ten-year-old Adam gave them, which the film treats as a long-running indignity.

Malcolm / Fisto

Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson

Written as Duncan’s younger brother, making him Teela’s adoptive uncle. That relationship is invented for the film.

Ram Man

Jon Xue Zhang

One of the warriors young Adam nicknamed.

Mekaneck

James Wilkinson

Another of Adam’s childhood nicknames that stuck.

Skeletor’s side

Trap Jaw

Sam C. Wilson

Cripples Duncan in the opening assault and is beaten by him in the final battle.

Tri-Klops

Kojo Attah

Not to be confused with Abraham Attah; different actor.

Spikor

James Apps

A deep cut from the toyline.

Goat Man

Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson

Physical performance by Björnsson; the voice is credited separately to Kellen Goff.

Voices, cameos and the credits scenes

Two of the six below are uncredited on screen, and one of them is the first live-action She-Ra anybody has seen since the character arrived in 1985!

Behind the camera

Brian May is often reported as the film’s composer. He is not. Daniel Pemberton wrote the score; May co-wrote and played on one track, "Eternia". Queen’s "Princes of the Universe" also appears in the film but not on the soundtrack album.

Frequently asked