My life as a Rock star

How a Kawerau grill chef swapped his spatula for Hollywood stardom. By Lee Umbers.

‘‘IF you smell what The Rock is cooking’’ was Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s signature catchphrase during his time as a superstar of professional wrestling.

And it was a hot day at the grill that led to Kawerau chef Kelly Mcnaught being plucked from a Gold Coast cafe´ to become a body double for the Hollywood A-lister.

Mcnaught was serving up food at the eatery when a customer asked if he could photograph him.

‘‘Then I got a Facebook message from an agent asking if I’d go to a movie casting,’’ recalls the 37-yearold.

‘‘I sat down in this massive room with all these people, and The Rock walked in. I was like, ‘whoa’. I shook his hand and the first thing I said was ‘Do you know who you are?’. We had a bit of a laugh.’’

Mcnaught says the casting call was for a stand-in for Johnson for the 2015 big-budget disaster film San Andreas that was to be filmed in Queensland.

Droves of applicants were whittled down to six, including an international athlete and a worldlevel strongman, ‘‘and me, some dude who was a chef who got called in’’.

‘‘The next day, they said, ‘Quit your job, you’re working with The Rock’. And that was how I ended up in the movie industry.’’

Mcnaught says he was initially taken on as a stand-in, substituting for Johnson before filming so scenes could be set up for lighting and camera arrangements.

He later progressed to being a back-up body double for Johnson’s cousin and stuntman Tanoai Reed, filling in for the actor in a number of scenes where Johnson’s face isn’t shown. He recalls the nerves of his first time in that role.

‘‘I’m sitting in a helicopter, there’s the co-stars. We ran through the scene and they were like, ‘Yeah, that’s good but we’re gonna do it again, breathe!’. I literally didn’t take one breath through the entire

I sat down in this massive room with all these people, and The Rock walked in.’

scene.’’

Leaving him gasping as well was the exercise regime needed to match the massively-muscled Johnson, 44.

At 1.88m Mcnaught, who is also a personal trainer, is not quite as tall as the Moana actor, who stands at a towering 1.96m.

But switching from a calisthenics exercise regime, which uses one’s own body weight to build muscle, to pumping serious iron, he bulked up from 90kg to 120kg at 7 per cent body fat to mirror Johnson’s frame.

‘‘My call-time would be 3 o’clock in the morning. I’d wake up at one, go to the gym and train. Then I’d train on my lunch-break, and after work. Three times a day, seven days a week, for six months.

‘‘For breakfast I was eating 10