Dwayne Johnson dove deep for ‘The Smashing Machine,’ with a little push from friends

Fear is not something one typically associates with Dwayne Johnson. Certainly not in the ring, as the charismatic heel with the cocked eyebrow, and not in Hollywood, where he has cemented himself as one of the industry’s most bankable, and singular, action stars and producers.

By all accounts the formula was working. Yet for years he’d had a suspicion that he could do more, offer more, as an actor. But when it came time to dive into something more raw, more vulnerable for “The Smashing Machine,” a drama about MMA fighter Mark Kerr that he’d been thinking about for over a decade, he realized something: He was scared.

“It’s not easy to think, ‘Hey, I’m capable of doing this and I know I can do this,'” Johnson, 53, told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “You may seem, may have a veneer, that you’re capable of it and you’re confident. But I was very nervous and scared to do it because it’s something that I hadn’t done before.”

Johnson has been open about his difficult childhood, his turbulent relationship with his late father, Rocky Johnson, and their financial insecurity. Yet as an entertainer, he’d kept all those old wounds out of the picture until now. For the first time in his career, he decided to take that trauma and channel it into something he loves: Performance and storytelling. And it’s already put him in the Oscar conversation.

“The Smashing Machine,” which opens in theaters Oct. 3, wasn’t just a leap into the unknown for Johnson. For his co-star Emily Blunt and filmmaker Benny Safdie, directing a feature alone for the first time, it was a chance to express different sides of themselves as well.

“It’s hard for us to know what we’re capable of sometimes,” Blunt said. “Maybe you need friends around you putting a jet pack on your back and saying, ‘You can’ and ‘you’re awesome’ and you have so much that you can delve into.”

As an actor, Johnson never really did the indie thing. He didn’t have to. In 2001, he burst onto the scene in a blockbuster, “The Mummy Returns,” and never looked back. In less than 25 years of making movies, his films have made over $12.5 billion at the global box office and none of those are Marvel.

When he decided to sit down and watch John Hyams’ documentary about Kerr, his larger-than-life career was firmly on the ascent with Luke Hobbs and the “Jumanji” franchise still to come. It stuck with him, however, and a few years later when he founded his production company Seven Bucks, he acquired the rights.

More years would pass until another movie ignited the spark again: The thrillingly frenetic “Uncut Gems.” And he decided to bring “The Smashing Machine” to the filmmakers who’d had the vision to put an actor like Adam Sandler in a role like Howard Ratner. What if they could see something different for him too?

“I think everybody has this certain idea of who he’s gonna be,” said Safdie, who co-directed ‘Uncut Gems’ with his brother Josh. “When I met him, and he brings this story, I was just like, OK, I get it. There’s so much there that maybe he’s not being asked to show.”

Johnson even announced the project in Nov. 2019. Then the pandemic hit, and “The Smashing Machine” went back in the cupboard.

Safdie, however, hadn’t stopped thinking about it. He’d even sent Johnson a version of a Nautica sweater Kerr had worn (size XXL), along with a handwritten letter saying no matter what happened, he hoped he could be involved in some way. Johnson never responded. And the obsession spiraled.

“It burrowed itself into my brain,” Safdie said. “Imagining Dwayne as Mark … it was like my imagination went crazy with it because I really just wanted to see it in existence.”

The truth is Johnson never got the letter, or the sweater. Who knows what might have happened if he had. But in reality, another, stranger door had opened when Safdie found himself acting alongside Blunt in “Oppenheimer.” Knowing that she’d become close with Johnson on “Jungle Cruise,” he took a chance and told her about “The Smashing Machine” not only for Johnson, but for her too.

Blunt too had been eager to see Johnson push himself. When she met him on “Jungle Cruise” she thought he’d be closer to “The Rock” and quickly came to understand that was not only a character he played but “the performance of a lifetime.”

“That’s self-realized performance,” Blunt said. “I was like, ‘You wrote it? You saw it? How many more bonkers people have you got lurking inside of you?'”

She started to wonder if Johnson was this great character actor who didn’t even realize it. In “The Smashing Machine,” she saw a “visceral, exciting opportunity for all of us to put our feet to the fire.”

Blunt added: “All three of us felt that, you know? That moment of terror of what you’re trying to create is something very unique. This was going to be, especially for DJ, I realized, a very unique experience and a kind of launch into the unknown. But I think maybe Benny and I knew that he could do it.”

Kerr was an early pioneer with UFC in its infancy well before the global MMA leader blossomed into a mainstream sport. While respected by core fight fans, Kerr’s popularity outside the cage never reached the heights or financial riches and endorsement deals enjoyed by modern UFC stars such as Ronda Rousey, Conor McGregor and Jon Jones.

He also struggled with addiction to painkillers and overdosed twice before getting sober. Then there was his sometimes-volatile long-term relationship with then girlfriend Dawn Staples (whom he would later marry, have a child with, and eventually separate from).

This would all require a different kind of preparation for Johnson, who had to shape his muscles into that of an MMA fighter instead of a wrestler. The transformation also included a new voice, new hair and facial prosthetics, overseen by Oscar-winning artist Kazu Hiro, which required nearly four hours in a makeup chair.

But by the time the cameras were rolling, both Dwayne Johnson and The Rock had effectively disappeared. This, Blunt said, was helpful during their domestic fight scenes, where punches may not have been thrown but the emotional wreckage is vast.

“The environment that Benny creates is one of such spontaneity that you really blur the lines between fiction and reality,” Blunt said. “It makes the scenes terribly exciting, but I think it makes them quite hard to come down from, because you’re really in a spell.”

Safdie decided to shoot their arguments in sections. Some they spent a lot of time on, shooting them over and over. But the final moment of their worst fight, they shot just once.

“When you’re holding on to somebody for dear life, I do know what that feels like and it’s not fun,” Safdie said. “Seeing that happen at such an intense level, it was like, ‘Done, we have it. We don’t need to do that again. I don’t want you guys to do it again.'”

When Safdie called cut, they took a 90-minute break. Everyone was crying.

Blunt and Safdie have done the awards thing a few times now. When asked what they’ve told Johnson about the circus, Blunt groaned: “Oh my God, we try not to discuss it really.”

Safdie, who won a Silver Lion for directing at the Venice Film Festival, just hopes that people connect with the story and maybe learn a little bit about themselves.

Whatever comes of it, Johnson is glad he overcame the fear and listened to that small voice – not the louder one with all the receipts telling him to stay in his lane.

“This has been the most challenging of my entire career, but also the most freeing of my career and the most gratifying because I knew what the opportunity was and that opportunity was for me to explore and access things that I hadn’t in the past, certainly not on film,” Johnson said. “I didn’t want to wake up tomorrow going, God … I really wish I got out of my comfort zone back then. I wanted to wake up and say, ‘I’m so glad I got out of my comfort zone.’ And I’m so glad I did it.”

Blunt added: “So are we.”

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AP Sports Writer Dan Gelston contributed from Philadelphia.