‘Chief of War’: Cliff Curtis Explains That Brutal Tooth Scene (VIDEO)

Kate Hahn August 15, 2025, 9:00 am

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Chief of War Season 1 Episode 4 “City of Flowers Part ll.”]

The pain. The excruciating pain. And to inflict that kind of pain on yourself — why did Keaou (Cliff Curtis) do it? That’s all we could think about while watching the scene in the fourth episode of this epic 18^th century Hawaiian royalty saga in which an infuriated Keaou violently punched his own face and then cut out his own tooth. He then held it up, his mouth bleeding, and vowed that much more blood would be spilled, but it would not be his own.

Keaou’s fury began when he learned that his recently deceased father, the king, had bequeathed the leadership of the military not to him, but to his cousin, Kamehameha (Kaina Makua). Keaou raged against him, accused him of stealing his birthright, called him a bastard son, and demanded, “Why don’t we spare our men and solve this now?” But Kamehameha chose not to engage in one-on-one combat. Keaou’s retort: “Then pray to the God of War for mercy. Because war has never been Kamehameha’s. But it has always been mine.”

Then the royal began to punch himself in the face, finally pulling out own tooth, and holding it up for all to see. Curtis explains to TV Insider why his character did it, “As a higher chief of the highest born lineage, his blood is sacred. The other thing that is sacred is his bone. A sacrifice of any real value is your blood and your bones…to knock out a couple of teeth — it’s [an] accessible way of reaching your blood and bone to show the seriousness of intent. It seems quite savage, but there’s a psychological play here. [Kamehameha] doesn’t take the challenge. He doesn’t take him up on the fight. And so they must go to war.”