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The trust between Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt allowed them to “go anywhere” while filming The Smashing Machine.
In a new interview for Vanity Fair, Johnson opened up about starring as Mark Kerr in the biographical drama — and specifically, how one of his real-life “best friends,” Blunt, was crucial when accessing the “vulnerability” necessary to portray the real-life UFC legend. The actress stars in the film from writer-director Benny Safdie as Kerr’s former wife Dawn Staples.
“If Emily and I weren’t best friends, I don’t know that we could’ve gone to the places we went to,” Johnson, 53, said in the interview, published Monday, Aug. 25. “That closeness created the trust, which then allowed for the vulnerability, which then allowed for [us to] go anywhere.”
The real-life pals reunite in the A24 film after first costarring in Disney’s 2021 movie Jungle Cruise — and Johnson’s ability to tap into Kerr for the forthcoming drama appeared “effortless,” Blunt, 42, told Vanity Fair.
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“It seemed to be an effortless immersion — like a full disappearance, spooky. From day one, he was elsewhere,” the Devil Wears Prada actress said of Johnson.
She added, “He has absorbed and borne witness to so much of what Mark has experienced that it was such a beautiful thing to watch this person let go of having to be an image, of having to be The Rock, and crack himself in half for this role.”
Kerr, as portrayed in The Smashing Machine, is a bit of a departure for Johnson. As his costar and real-life bestie put it in the interview, the wrestler-turned-actor “has been pigeonholed into the image of the big hero who’s got all the answers and he’s going to fix everything and he’s invincible.”
Explained Blunt further, “I think until this moment, maybe [Dwayne] thought that was the only lane that people wanted to see him in.”
The actress’s role as Staples is also a departure of sorts because, as she pointed out to Vanity Fair, prior to the film she’d “actually never played somebody who is still with us. I’m very grateful to her … I just needed to be her advocate.”
Both Kerr and Staples — who have already seen an early screening of the biographical drama, according to Vanity Fair — were in close contact with the actors portraying them, as well as writer-director Safdie before, during and after filming, per the outlet.
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One of the primary things the filmmakers communicated to the subjects was their intention to alter the way Staples was portrayed in the 2002 documentary that inspired Johnson to contact Safdie, 39, about collaborating.
To Johnson, the doc, called The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr, “painted Dawn in a light that perhaps was a little unfair” — something he sought to do differently with his and Blunt’s portrayal of the then-couple.
And “however eruptive” Kerr and Staples’ “relationship was,” Blunt told Vanity Fair, “it was centered in this huge need for each other — a codependency.”
Added the actress, “It’s an all-consuming existence to be a fighter and you need everybody in your life to get in line with that. I just don’t think Dawn was the kind of person just to get in line.”
The Smashing Machine hits theaters Oct. 3.
