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I wouldn’t really call 2024 the Year of Dwayne Johnson, but here we are. The Rock is one of GQ’s Men of the Year. I suspect he mostly got the cover because A) he’s promoting his Christmas film, Red One, and B) he agreed to a lengthy tell-all interview. There was an industry story earlier this year about Johnson’s unprofessional behavior on the set of Red One, so this piece features some comments from Johnson, Chris Evans and director Jake Kasdan about all of that. It’s an obvious clean-up job for one of the most highly-managed actors/producers in Hollywood. That being said, it’s pretty effective, especially since most people weren’t even paying attention to the original story. Some highlights from the GQ cover story:
His terrible childhood. “By the time I was 13, my parents were already on the fritz, and everything came to me to try and solve and figure out,” Johnson says. Thirteen is also the age that his father, Rocky, was first forced to leave home. Johnson has told the story before: Rocky, then just a boy, confronting his mother’s drunken boyfriend at the time, only to have his mother choose the boyfriend over the son. “Once I got older and I understood, and then I really began to understand that my dad loved me with the capacity that he did. He was thrown out of the house at 13, as you know. When you’re thrown out at 13 and your mom picks her boyfriend over you, that’s a hard place to come back from. And that will inform how you love people and what you care for in life and how you care about people. So it was really f–ked up—that really damaged my dad. So his limited capacity to love is what raised me.”
How he puts projects together: Johnson—whose supernatural connection with his own audience dates back to his days in the WWE—found that he had a talent for knowing not just the projects his fans had a particular hunger for but also for the times they might be hungriest. “So the date is Christmas, X year,” he says. “Year and a half, two years before that: ‘There’s our date.’ Now here comes the film. Now we work backwards from there. And I found myself doing that for years, actually. And it worked and it served me back then because it helped build my career.”
On how he used to roll his eyes at actors talking about their crafts & working outside of their typecasting: “I don’t know who the f–k that guy is. I feel like I’ve evolved and grown. What’s evolved and changed, and I mean this respectfully because I love people, is it’s got to be for me. [That will change the projects I do,] a hundred percent. Now not to say that ‘Oh, there’s no more big movies.’ Because the big movies are fun and there’s a place for them in our business for a lot of families and people around the world to enjoy them. But there’s also a place for me, in my career, where the material is deeper, it allows me to sink my teeth into something deeper, richer.”
The ‘Red One’ controversy: Earlier this year, the online trade publication The Wrap published a piece alleging that Johnson was chronically late to the set of Red One, frustrating his fellow cast and crew, and costing the production what The Wrap suggested was a considerable amount of money. The piece also alleged, as Johnson helpfully supplies to me himself, that “I pee in a bottle” while working. A beat. “Yeah. That happens.” What about the “late” part of that story? “Yeah, that happens too,” Johnson says. “But not that amount, by the way. That was a bananas amount. That’s crazy. Ridiculous.” Johnson says that overall the controversy was “bullshit.”
Jake Kasdan on Johnson’s lateness: Hetells me that Johnson “never missed a day of work ever. He has a lot going on. He can be late sometimes, but such is Hollywood—that’s the case with everybody. Honestly, I’ve made three big movies with him. I’ve never seen him be anything but great to every single person on the set.”
Chris Evans acknowledged that Johnson would work out in the morning before coming to set. “But this is something that the producers, the director, and it’s all his team, so they all know this. So it’s all basic. It’s not like he’s late unexpectedly, and I wouldn’t even call it late. He comes in slightly later on certain mornings, but it’s part of the plan. It’s worked into the schedules and everyone knows it, so he shows up when he’s scheduled to show up.”
The lateness thing… I hate people who are late, and I’ve been early to every meeting and appointment I’ve ever had in my life, because if I was ever late, it would haunt me forever. But I feel like the people around Johnson understand his packed schedule and they know how to organize their schedules around him. Which isn’t right, but it’s the way it is. That’s what happens when you’re a big-name celebrity. But the peeing in bottles thing? Gross, omfg. How are you, a man worth hundreds of millions of dollars, ever in a situation where you’re peeing in a bottle on the set of your movie?
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, cover courtesy of GQ.
