Back for round two
The Rock wrestles with more stories from his childhood that turned him into a megastar.
Season 2 Saturdays (from 24 September) M-Net (*101) 18:30
Earlier this year, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was named by Forbes magazine as the highest paid actor in the world. The man has done it all, from playing college football, to being one of the biggest (figuratively and literally) wrestlers in WWE history, so it only makes sense he would hypothetically be running for president in 2032 – the theme of his comedy Young Rock.
In season 1, Dwayne shared anecdotes of his life through the years as the series jumps back and forth between time and places like Hawaii, Miami and Pennsylvania, with Adrian Groulx (Billy in The Christmas Cure film) portraying
The Rock as a kid. Bradley Constant (Young Rock was his breakout role) is seen as the teenage Rock, and Uli Latukefu (Byamba in drama series Marco Polo) as College Dwayne.
The first season ended on Election Day where The Rock seemed to have a chance at winning the race. “In season 2 we are where we left of in 2032 in the final two weeks of my presidential campaign. Things are rolling off well until an unwanted wrinkle comes back from my past and begins to jeopardise my campaign,” says Dwayne, who is the show’s executive producer.
MORE WRESTLING
Wrestling isn’t often taken seriously as a sport or form of entertainment, but it helped transform Dwayne’s life and catapulted him to the star he is today. Season 2 will continue to honour the art, but it will also show the story of Dwayne and his legendary father Rocky Johnson (Joseph Lee Anderson, Officer Campbell in the movie Midnighters). Viewers will see Dwayne as a kid wrestle in a dream sequence, too.
“It takes years for someone to learn how to become a professional wrestler and then years after that how to tune your craft – and these actors are doing it as best they can,” say Dwayne about the cast playing him at different ages. “The key with this is to make the actors look like they know what they are doing,” he adds. Dwayne also says his father had a major impact on the lives and careers of the kids who watched him wrestle. “When you look at history culturally, a lot of my friends who are black and either professional athletes, world champions or hiphop artists who grew up watching my father… that was a moment for them that told them they could make it in life.”
MORE ROCKY CHALLENGES
Even though it has the fictional element of The Rock wanting to rule the United States, the series is based on pivotal defining moments in Dwayne’s life and his family’s life. Expect to see more of Dwayne’s teenage years where his father was unemployed and his family evicted from their house. “The Nashville years were prior to Pennsylvania and were a lot harder for him,” explains Bradley, who plays teenage Rock.
“It was just tougher, and [Dwayne] started demystifying Rocky and learning how to be more comfortable being uncomfortable,” the actor explains. Add the pressure and struggle to come out on top, season 2 will take us through the journey of The Rock becoming a sensation – and hopefully he’ll become President in his world.
Run The World
Season 1 Mondays 1Magic (*103) 22:00
Who run the world? Girls! In the early 2000s, many of us grew up watching screenwriter Mara Brock Akil’s dramedy series Girlfriends on SABC1 (*191) even though many were too young to understand a lot of the subject matter that was hidden behind the comedy. The show dealt with issues like race, colourism, sexuality, love and the struggles and celebration of being a black woman.
Now Whitney (Amber Stevens West, Maxine from comedy series The Carmichael Show), Ella (Andrea Bordeaux, Harley in crime series NCIS), Renee (Bresha Webb, Yvette Brown in comedy series Marlon) and Sondi (Corbin Reid, Meggy Travers in drama series How to Get Away With Murder) bring us a new group of girlfriends who’ll make us laugh, and comfort and celebrate us through our experiences of being young black women in Run The World.
The comedy series is set in
Harlem, New York and follows this group of thriving black women in their early 30s as they navigate past traumas (they literally have a group therapy session to debunk some of their issues as friends), careers, love lives, fears and everything in between while defining what it means to be a black woman. “You hit the birth jackpot when you’re born a black woman,” exclaims Renee in the trailer of the show.
THE STRUGGLES WE FACE
“I knew that telling a story like this and highlighting the black female experience in Harlem was going to be important and cool, but I didn’t realise how much it meant to me personally until I was really involved in it,” says Amber. “I’ve struggled with not feeling like I was black enough for anything as an actor but also in my real life. I am biracial, and I grew up in this bubble where we didn’t discuss race, but when I stepped into the real world, the older I got, the more I realised how I struggled with me being a black person in the modern world.”
In the series, Whitney is a business school graduate climbing the corporate ladder. She’s engaged to her college sweetheart Ola (Tosin Morohunfola, Keith from drama series Love Is). On the outside Whitney has the perfect life, with planning a wedding being her biggest struggle. But the truth is that she feels she missed out on a lot and didn’t get to experience the highs and lows of the dating world because Ola is the only man she’s ever been with. She then goes down a path of self-sabotage by cheating and has a one-night stand in the very first episode.
“Everything in the show that is not supposed to be funny is funny,” says series creator Leigh Davenport (producer of drama series Harlem Nights). “Yes, you just humiliated yourself, but pretty soon we are going to laugh about this. You don’t always get an opportunity as a woman to see your stories be told in this dynamic and authentic way. It’s different because the bromance comedy scene has almost always been a black male dominated segment in television, so now we’re taking over in style.”