As we rapidly approach the Hollywood Awards we thought here at The Book, The Film, The T-Shirt it might be nice to sit down with some of the actors, actresses and filmmakers that might be in the running for some award wins.
The first cab off the rank is a man that for more than a decade was known as The Rock. A man who started his career as a successful wrestler before venturing into the film world with a role in the hit action film The Scorpion King.
Nowadays he is known as Dwayne Johnson and has appeared in some of the highest grossing movies and franchises of recent times including – Jumanji and The Fast & The Furious. He has also appeared in both the DC and Marvel universes.
This year we saw Johnson appear in a much smaller movie – smaller, but a film closer to his heart. With director Benny Safdie at the helm of The Smashing Machine Dwayne Johnson was transformed from action hero to a damaged man in the form of professional fighter Mark Kerr – someone who eventually found himself in a constant battle against his inner demons.
Johnson’s performance was like none we had ever seen him deliver before and now his name is being mentioned in Awards circles – recently we were lucky enough to be able to sit down with Johnson and talk to him about the role.
As he asked about whether the fact that he got to play a ‘fallen’ wrestler and fighter in Mark Kerr it soon became obvious just how personally affected Johnson was by this role.
“What filming The Smashing Machine really allowed me to do was not only explore things that I wasn’t willing to explore in the past in terms of pain and struggle,” says Johnson after thinking for a moment. “But also the truth is, from day one, when I stepped on set with Benny and with Emily (Blunt – his co-star) and I got into Mark’s skin, it all came flooding back. And I will share this with you, the thing that came flooding back first was that I had a lot of my friends in the world of pro wrestling and in the world of combat, and so many of them have lost their lives to mental health.”
“Some of them also lost their lives to addiction,” he continues. “And there was a run there, unfortunately, where I had a lot of my friends were passing away. So that came flooding back and this idea that how lucky and fortunate I was to be able to play Mark Kerr, who was one of the fortunate ones who didn’t succumb to addiction. So all that came flooding back. when I made the movie, and that was one of the things that I really wasn’t willing to explore until I took the role and then took the part.”
As the discussion goes on Johnson also admits that while playing the role of Mark alongside Emily Blunt who plays Mark’s parter Dawn Staples he realised that just how much sacrifice comes with careers like this.
“On top of everything else, you know, you realize that with these guys and these girls who are fighters they put their lives on the line when they step into the cage or they step into the ring,” he says. “But you quickly realise a few other things. Number one is while they sacrifice everything, they’re not the only ones that sacrifice. It is the wives, it’s the girlfriends, husbands, the boyfriends, it’s the kids, it’s the team around them. Everybody sacrifices something. And I think the final big lesson I learned is that sometimes the thing you’re chasing most, especially maybe in that world as an athlete or a singer or whoever, whatever it is you do, sometimes the thing you chase most, whatever that North Star is that you want most, sometimes it’s the best thing that never happened. Because in this case, in Mark’s case, he, he chased the big one in Japan and $200,000 was a life changing amount of money for him and his family at that time. And as we know, he didn’t win, but it wound up being the best thing for him because it really opened his eyes to really what’s important in life.”
Johnson is also quick to admit that taking on this role in The Smashing Machine was a challenge for himself. For once he was stepping away from the world of action blockbusters and taking on a role in a movie that many would call ‘arthouse.’
“One of the anchoring reasons why I wanted to take this part and why I wanted to tell this story is because I wanted to challenge myself in ways that I had not been challenged before,” he says smiling. “I wanted to do something that was scary, and I also wanted to do something that I didn’t know if I would be able to do. I wanted to crack myself open.”
“And for me I knew right away that this is going to be a film that perhaps not a billion people are going to go see,” he continues. “And that’s okay, because I wanted to show a different side of myself that I had not shown before, but also a different side of myself that I had not explored. And I wanted that. I wanted to explore this and I really wanted to challenge myself again in ways that I, that I had not been challenged. And I felt like really, this was, this was that opportunity. There was this idea of being scared to do something and I had not been scared to do something and nervous about it in quite some time. The other movies are big, they’re fun, they take a lot of hard work, and as, you know there a lot of people involved in movies like that. But there was something about this, about being able to facie fears. For me, that was really exciting, being able to disappear and transform that was exciting for me. And that’s the thing that whenever I get that opportunity again, I’m going to run to it.”
The Smashing Machine is currently available on a number of streaming platforms.
No Comments