The Rock goes rogue
‘I come from a crazy, at-timesdysfunctional wrestling family.’
BELIEVE it or not, Hollywood executives told Dwayne Johnson ‘‘no thanks’’ when he pitched his latest movie.
It was an unusual rejection for the industry’s reigning box office champion, whose Jumanji reboot in 2017 made nearly US$1 billion worldwide. And so before he trades insults with Jason Statham in Hobbs & Shaw or straps in for the Disney’s Jungle Cruise, the artist forever known as The Rock put on his independent film producer hat and went outside the traditional studio system to make Fighting With My Family.
His Seven Bucks Productions found financing through WWE Studios and Britain’s Film4 to make the scrappy, relatively lowbudget comedy inspired by
WWE wrestler Paige’s life story. Johnson makes a cameo appearance, as he did in Paige’s real-life rise from a small
English town to the top of pro wrestling.
‘‘Every studio passed on this, regardless of if I was attached,’’ Johnson says. ‘‘They were like, ‘No, no. The subject matter’.
And, and also too, you know, generally the tapestry of pro wrestling as it’s been shown in film hasn’t always been done in the greatest of ways certainly that would make us proud, coming from that world.
[Darren] Aronofsky did it beautifully in The Wrestler, but before that and since then, it hasn’t really been shown. So there was a lot of challenges with this.’’
Johnson, 46, says that while he knew Paige through WWE, he didn’t know her back-story – including a brother and parents who shared her passion for pro wrestling – until a serendipitous night filming Fast & Furious 6 in London. Unable to sleep, he was flipping channels and came across a documentary about the performer (real name: SarayaJade Bevis).
‘‘I immediately identified with this crazy wrestling family who was very loving, loved the world of pro wrestling,’’ he says. ‘‘And I come from a crazy, at-timesdysfunctional wrestling family – my dad, my grandmother and grandfather, uncles, cousins, you name it.’’
Johnson’s Tooth Fairy co-star Stephen Merchant was hired to write and direct. Florence Pugh signed on to play Paige, with Nick Frost and Lena Headey as her parents.
For his part, Merchant says he originally thought wrestling ‘‘was just fat men bumping bellies’’.
‘‘I didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t understand if it was real or fake. And so, I would never have thought I’d be the person to make this film.
‘‘My suspicion is that Dwayne only knows two English people, me and Jason Statham. I’m the one who has done more of the screenwriting, so here we are.’’
Thinking back to the first time he watched the documentary about the Bevis family, Merchant says he thought he would sit there and just ‘‘sneer’’ at the family.
‘‘That changed very quickly. I was so invested in their family dream. There was just so much emotion and humour and pathos and sentiment.’’
‘‘I think what we wanted this film to be was not an impression,’’ chimes in the Oxford-born Pugh – a newbie to wrestling who now considers herself a ‘‘slight expert’’ with a Twitter feed full of WWE alerts. ‘‘Whilst we’re playing these amazing characters we had to find some level of understanding in our approach.’’
The actress prepared by studying online recaps of the wrestler’s matches – the way she cut her attitude-filled promos, how she moved.
‘‘It’s a wrestling film, but ultimately it’s about her and her family and the downs, as much as the ups,’’ she says of Paige, whom she met in person only two weeks prior to the movie’s debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January. ‘‘And that is real life. You don’t get anywhere without losing a lot. That is so truthful about how hard we work to get where we need to be.’’
When it came to filming the biggest scene in the story about her own meteoric rise, Paige gave advice to Pugh to calm her nerves.
It was a Monday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and only the fourth day of shooting. In order to recreate Paige’s iconic WWE debut match, Merchant and his crew, aided by WWE camera crews still in place after a live-taping of Raw, asked 20,000 avid wrestling fans to stay in their seats to double as extras.
‘‘Many of those people had seen the match, and they knew who Paige was,’’ remembers Merchant. ‘‘[Pugh] was amazingly contained and still and present and ready.’’ With only an hour to get the sequence down, Johnson served as crowd MC and ringside producer, giving Pugh pep talks.
‘‘It was nerve-wracking on all kinds of levels,’’ says Merchant.
Johnson coached Pugh through a pre-show warm-up as pro wrestlers kept watch. ‘‘On that day I was getting all this advice from people,’’ says Pugh. ‘‘And I realised, ‘OK, I just need to message [Paige].’ I said, ‘I’m about to do the thing that you did four years ago, and I’m feeling the way that you were. … Is there anything that you need to tell me?’ ‘‘
Paige sent back the words Pugh needed to hear. ‘‘She sent me this huge long message and said, ‘Remember: The most important thing is you go out there and you be a total badass, and the rest will just happen’,’’ says Pugh, smiling. ‘‘Best piece of advice.’’
DWAYNE ‘‘THE ROCK’’ JOHNSON
AP/TNS After previews in select cinemas this weekend, (M) opens nationwide on March 21.