Dwayne’s voice is nothing to Moana about
HAPPYThanksgiving! I know it’s not a festival we celebrate back home but I love it here in the US.
I had a very traditional Thanksgiving – that’s right, I headed to Las Vegas.
I stayed at the wonderful, but after my pathetic attempts to gamble, the not really aptly named Wynn Hotel.
That’s Wynn as in Steve Wynn – the owner and brains behind the amazing place.
Not content with just being a hotelier he also conceived and wrote Steve Wynn’s Showstoppers in one of the hotel’s magnificent theatres.
A 30-piece live orchestra and a cast of 40! There were more Broadway hits than you can shake a jazz hand at – plus incredible performance and costumes.
It’s a must- see if you’re ever in Vegas… in fact, I call it a Wynn-Win situation!
On Friday, a new animated movie, Moana was released. It’s yet another classic from Walt Disney Studios and I had a sit-down with its star, the remarkable Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
He made a career out of clotheslines and eye-poking, which sounds like a normal washing day in shared closes around Scotland, but by that I mean he was a wrestler with WWE.
Since then, big Dwayne has moved into acting and quickly laid the smackdown on the box office. He’s now the highest-paid star in the world, and he’s got the biggest box office.
He’s also got biceps bigger than my head, but that’s not that impressive — my maths teacher told me my brain was tiny anyway.
I always ask stars who appear in animations if they’re doing a children’s cartoon for the kids… or for the money.
“It’s definitely for the kids!” laughed Dwayne. “And for the legacy. But I’m happy to say I’m doing OK in terms of having a pretty penny in the bank.
“It’s also an opportunity to showcase Polynesian culture to the world. That’s part of my culture – I’m half-black and half Samoan and very proud of that.”
Dwayne has a lot of muscles but he’s exercising new ones for this movie –his singing muscle. Is there no end to his talents? “Yes, there is a wonderful end to my talents! It happens at 3:30am when I’m drunk. I wasn’t a singer who became an actor.
“I had a lot of great help and it sounded… OK.”
Don’t worry, Dwayne, I wasn’t about to disagree with you – not with 6ft 5ins of beefcake sitting across from me!