Rock across the ages

TThe Dick Van Dyke Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Seinfeld and Roseanne and, more recently, Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. But the Hollywood blueprint usually involves fusing a real celebrity and a fictional setting.

Young Rock, based on the life of wrestler-turnedactor Dwayne Johnson, is something else altogether. It begins on a fictional springboard – Johnson being interviewed as a United States presidential candidate in 2032 – but then leaps into three very real parts of his life: as a 10-year-old in Hawaii, as a high-school student in Pennsylvania and as a college student and football player at the University of Miami.

Johnson stars in the series as himself, alongside Adrian Groulx (as the 10-year-old Johnson), Bradley Constant (the 15-year-old Johnson) and Uli Latukefu (the 18-year-old Johnson).

But in some respects, while four versions of him are front and centre, Young Rock is less a sitcom about Johnson’s life, and more a love letter from son to father.

Johnson’s father, Rocky Johnson, was a professional wrestler in the 1970s and 1980s, an era viewed by many wrestling fans as a golden one for the sport, as it gave birth to superstar wrestlers such as Andre the Giant and the Iron Sheik.

Johnson was notable for winning the tag team championship with his partner, Tony Atlas, in 1983. The pair were the sport’s first black champions.

‘‘From my perspective, it was truly a love letter to professional wrestling, which is a business that I grew up in and a business that I’ve loved all of my life and learned some of my most valuable, while very unorthodox, lessons,’’ Johnson says.

‘‘So to be able to highlight and showcase these men who were, in essence, my superheroes . . . they didn’t wear capes when I was a little boy. They were these men in the professional wrestling world.’’

Young Rock subverts the perfect sitcom-dad trope and brings to the screen something more complicated.

‘‘The most important thing, two years ago [when the show was in development], was to really understand why, and what, is the real reason we’re going to do this’’ Johnson says.

‘‘How can we create something for audiences that hopefully will entertain them but also allow them a bit of a take-away? Once I felt comfortable with that, then we moved forward.

‘‘I thought, ‘let’s not take the easy route’,’’ Johnson adds. ‘‘My life, you know, we use these terms wild and crazy and they’re great sizzle words to promote this thing, but it was incredibly complicated, and it was incredibly tough growing up.

‘‘And we specifically went with these timelines in my life that are very defining – 10, 15 and 18 years old.’’

His relationship with his father, Johnson says, was incredibly complicated. ‘‘And it was fuelled by tough love,’’ he says.

‘‘My dad was kicked out of his house at 13 and he was homeless, so that shaped the man who then raised me. And in that complication, then came an extraordinary life that was full of travel. I lived in 13 different states by the time I was 13 years old.

‘‘We had to figure out the right creative pathways but also find the willingness to rip some things open,’’ Johnson says. ‘‘But also, the series has really allowed me to appreciate those hard times that much more. Sometimes when you’re in it, you’re in the bubble. And sometimes when you see somebody else going through it, it gives you a different perspective.’’

The toughest part of his childhood, Johnson says, was ‘‘starting around 13, [and] being around 15 years old. That is when I started to veer off the tracks and do a lot of things that I shouldn’t have been doing.

‘‘I fought tooth and nail with my mum and my dad [to not leave Hawaii] but times were hard for us and it became harder and harder for us to pay the rent.

‘‘Then we wound up going to Nashville, Tennessee, then we were forced out of Nashville, then to Bethlehem, Pennysylvania. We thought we were going to make a home in Tennessee but it didn’t work out that way. Things happen. In the course of nine months I was in three different cities, and things were really ... there was a real instability.’’

The performance of actor Joseph Lee Anderson, who plays his father, was uncanny, Johnson says. ‘‘I spent a lot of time with Joseph just talking about my dad, about the relationship, that complicated, tough-ass relationship that I had with my dad,’’ Johnson says.

‘‘And that’s the tricky thing about this, to find that balance of the complication of who he was as a man and the tough love he raised me with.

‘‘One of the anchoring elements that I shared with Joseph, which I think he really nailed, is that my dad had a lot of friends, and he had a lot of enemies, but he had this unique ability to always make someone feel good,’’ he adds.

‘‘And, man, you know, those are the special people out there in the world who just have this unique ability to make you feel good the moment you come in the room.’’

One of the key elements of the show is its diverse cast, a byproduct, Johnson says, of the show’s mission statement to bring authenticity to every detail.

‘‘This is my life, and it is who I am, and I’m halfsamoan and half-black,’’ he says.

‘‘And in the world of pro-wrestling, we have the Iron Sheik from Iran, we have Andre the Giant from France, we have the Junkyard Dog and we have my dad. We have the Wild Samoans from Samoa.

‘‘The responsibility that we had was just to be authentic and to make sure everything felt real,’’ Johnson adds.

‘‘We reached out to all of our wrestlers, and the ones who are no longer here with us, we reached out to their families and made sure that they knew that they were going to be portrayed in a positive way, because that was important to us.’’

And Johnson’s father, who died in January last year, would have loved the show, Johnson says.

‘‘He would have loved this, and he would have been so proud,’’ says Johnson.

‘‘Because for the first time we are showcasing this world, those men in the 70s and 80s, and showcasing it through the lens of something that’s positive. I know that would have meant a lot to my dad.’’ – Sydney Morning Herald

Young Rock screens on Prime on Thursdays and is available to stream on Sky Go.