![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/entertainment-6-2.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Source: Entertainment Weekly<\/p>\n
After years of starring in action movies, including the Fast and the Furious and Mummy franchises, Snitch, Pain & Gain, G.I. Joe, and San Andreas, and action-comedies The Other Guys, Central Intelligence, and the Jumanji franchise, Dwayne Johnson was yearning to show he could do more.<\/p>\n
He got it.<\/p>\n
In The Smashing Machine, he delivers a performance full of pain, heartbreak, passion, resilience, and tenacity as Mark Kerr, an MMA fighter who became a pioneer in the world of UFC. Behind the scenes, though, he was putting up a bigger fight with an addiction to painkillers, and his toxic relationship with girlfriend Dawn Staples \u2014 another standout, knockout performance by Emily Blunt \u2014 adds more weight to his inner turmoil.<\/p>\n
Article continues after advertisement<\/p>\n
But making sure audiences didn\u2019t see the Rock, the WWE superstar alter ego who made Johnson a household name, on the big screen was top of mind for the actor and one of his big challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all-consuming because that was the goal: to completely disappear. And that was something that I had not been able to do in my entire career,\u201d Johnson says on the latest episode of Entertainment Weekly\u2019s The Awardist podcast, joined by Blunt. \u201cAs Emily likes to say, not been allowed to disappear. But also, I didn\u2019t know if I could, and I was so hungry for that kind of challenge to disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n
It helped that his face would eventually be covered in 23 prosthetic pieces \u2014 three-and-a-half hours to apply \u201ceyes, nose, cauliflower ear, scars,\u201d he says, all the work of famed special effects makeup artist Kazu Hiro \u2014 and there was also the vocal and physical transformation (he gained over 30 pounds).<\/p>\n
\u201cTo play these real people who are still alive today, who went through it, who were broken emotionally in many ways and who rose up out of the ashes, so to speak, but also this idea of what transforming really means\u2026I\u2019ve seen other actors do it. I saw Emily do it in Oppenheimer, and I wanted to do that,\u201d he openly admits.<\/p>\n
Blunt remembers the first time she saw her costar, who she first worked with on 2021\u2019s Jungle Cruise, fully transform into Kerr for their first camera test.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone went very quiet, which I\u2019m sure must have been very unnerving for DJ walking in. Everyone just stared. I almost cried because it was such an immersion, not just physically,\u201d she recalls. \u201cFor me, what was more interesting and captivating was the energetic shift. I consider myself someone who knows DJ pretty well, and he was gone \u2014 like, completely gone. I felt this relief was over him. That really moved me, that he looked very peaceful as Mark. I\u2019ve watched him for years be this colossal movie star, which is not for the faint of heart, and it\u2019s actually not easy \u2014 you have to be born with that kind of charisma that he has, naturally and the ability to sort of pull audiences into his heart, even if it\u2019s in a Fast and Furious. But it was just really amazing to see the relief to not have to be invincible or the Rock, any of those qualities which are not actually true to who we are as human beings. We are all sort of fragile in a way; none of us are Teflon. And I just got so excited and I still get goosebumps thinking about that day, \u2019cause I just knew there would be this journey ahead of not only a cathartic experience for all of us \u2014 \u2019cause we knew it was gonna be very exposing humanly, and you learn a lot about yourself and about the people that you\u2019re working with \u2014 but I just knew he was gonna love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s journey toward getting the movie made started in 2019, and at one point approached Benny Safdie about directing. But then the pandemic happened, and once productions resumed, Johnson went to work on other projects. As luck would have it, Safdie and Blunt costarred in Oppenheimer; one day while filming that movie, he asked if she could reconnect him with Johnson because he couldn\u2019t stop thinking about this story he told him about in 2019. That night, Blunt, now curious about this project the two guys were talking about, watched a documentary about Kerr and Staples.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t wanna be pushy, but I would\u2019ve been really pissed off if they hadn\u2019t come to me for Dawn,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cI watched the documentary, and I was riveted by this incredibly volcanic relationship. And I\u2019d never played a relationship like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark and Dawn\u2019s arguments are frequent, as they insult and belittle each other \u2014 but then they make up just as quickly, repeating the cycle over and over. Their tumultuous relationship only further feeds Mark\u2019s growing anxieties; she\u2019s looking for solace from mounting tensions in her daily life. Blunt finds one scene in particular \u201cemblematic of who they are and revealing,\u201d when they visit the local fair after he returns home from rehab following an overdose. She can\u2019t wait to ride the Gravitron, but he has no interest in the ride and being turned upside down \u2014 after all, he\u2019s trying to keep himself centered and in control.<\/p>\n
\u201cDawn was someone who was always chasing wildness, was part of the hazardous nature of that relationship, or that addiction to drama, to wildness, to freedom,\u201d Blunt explains. \u201cI think Mark was probably always trying to seek solace from madness, \u2019cause his life was always on the line, whether it was in the ring or down that rabbit hole of his own addiction. So that Gravitron ride for her is like that full flight of freedom, and you see her so joyful. It was an important moment for me, for the character who\u2019s fairly tormented most of the movie, that she\u2019s joyful and she\u2019s alive, and she\u2019s away from him. So it was quite an important moment that he is on the outside of being able to access that in her.\u201d<\/p>\n
For everything the scene meant, thought, it wasn\u2019t a joyful one to film. Blunt, it turns out, is not one for rides.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a trooper,\u201d Johnson insists. \u201cShe rode that thing twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which might\u2019ve been one too many times. \u201cI got so sick,\u201d Blunt admits. \u201cI actually puked when I got home. It was awful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately, Safdie only made her do one take of another scene, a climactic moment late in the film when Dawn, following an explosive argument at home, locks herself in the bathroom. But not before getting a gun out of his nightstand. In the bathroom, she\u2019s holding it to her head; Mark, unaware of what she\u2019s doing but scared nonetheless, breaks down the door, gets control of the firearm, and in turn, wrestles Dawn to the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just felt really scared about it. It\u2019s such a dark place that you go to that it\u2019s not even\u2026I didn\u2019t approach it like, \u2018Oh, this will be something to sink my teeth into,’\u201d she explains. \u201cIt\u2019s not a joyous experience for me doing those scenes in any way. There\u2019s nothing that I particularly relish about it. It\u2019s just a really exposing, vulnerable place that everyone went to on set. It wasn\u2019t just me; it was DJ and what he had to absorb from me in that moment, literally restraining me, and the things I was screaming at him were just horrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Safdie hadn\u2019t originally planned on filming the bathroom scene on the day they did, but Blunt says they had momentum from filming the previous portion of the fight in the kitchen, so they kept going.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t remember very much from it, to be honest with you\u2026. I do remember hearing him break the door down. I remember that. And I don\u2019t remember much after it. And I knew where I had to go, and I knew what I had to yell,\u201d she recalls. \u201cBenny had said to us before we went \u2014 because he loves that spontaneous set where it\u2019s found rather than planned, so nothing feels performative, it feels so real, which is also quite scary with a scene like that \u2014 so he said to DJ, \u2018 If you can end up on the floor, that would be great.\u2019 And he just left it at that. And I felt like my heart was pounding in my head before, it was so intense. Mm-hmm. And I remember hearing him come through the door, and then suddenly we were on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was in that moment she knew she was \u201cbeing taken to the ground by a wrestler,\u201d she says. \u201cAdds And then we sat on the bathroom floor and we drank tequila for an hour and a half and had a therapy session, \u2019cause we couldn\u2019t move.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe left parts of our soul on that floor,\u201d Johnson adds.<\/p>\n
Check out more from EW\u2019s The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year\u2019s best in TV, movies, and more.<\/p>\n
Listen to Johnson and Blunt\u2019s full interview on The Awardist below, where Johnson opens up about how his father\u2019s addiction and mother\u2019s cancer diagnosis played into one of his most emotional scenes. The two also have some laughs as they share a hilarious memory from the first time they ever met, and they look back on their first day working together on Jungle Cruise and give an update on a potential sequel to that movie. Plus, Johnson reveals his pitch for being in The Devil Wears Prada 2, Blunt looks back on the call she got to join Steven Spielberg\u2019s next movie, and more.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere on the podcast, EW\u2019s awards team shares thoughts on the renaming of the SAG Awards to the Actors Awards, as well as observations from the Governors Awards, where Tom Cruise, Dolly Parton, Debbie Allen, and Wynn Thomas all received Oscars, and more.<\/p>\n