{"id":96461,"date":"2025-08-25T18:25:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T18:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/96461\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T18:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T18:25:08","slug":"dwayne-johnsons-smashing-machine-transformation-took-four-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/96461\/","title":{"rendered":"Dwayne Johnson’s ‘Smashing Machine’ Transformation Took Four Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDwayne Johnson<\/a> recently told Vanity Fair<\/a> that he spent \u201cthree to four hours\u201d in the makeup chair each morning during the filming of \u201cThe Smashing Machine<\/a>,\u201d Benny Safdie\u2019s sports drama that casts Johnson as two-time UFC heavyweight champion Mike Kerr. It\u2019s a rare dramatic pivot for Johnson, who admitted he felt an unprecedented level of nerves when going into production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was very real. I had not experienced that in a very, very, very long time, where I was really scared and thinking, \u2018I don\u2019t know if I can do this. Can I do this?\u2019\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI realized that maybe these opportunities weren\u2019t coming my way because I was too scared to explore this stuff\u2026 I was so hungry for an opportunity to do something raw and gritty and rip myself open. And all of a sudden,\u00a0\u2018Smashing Machine\u2019\u00a0comes along.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film tracks Kerr\u2019s professional triumphs and personal struggles, including his substance abuse battles and his tumultuous relationship with wife Dawn (Emily Blunt). Johnson and Blunt are close friends after starring in \u201cJungle Cruise\u201d together, which helped Johnson lean into his vulnerable side on camera.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDJ has been pigeonholed into the image of the big hero who\u2019s got all the answers and he\u2019s going to fix everything and he\u2019s invincible,\u201d Blunt told Vanity Fair<\/a>. \u201cI think until this moment, maybe he thought that was the only lane that people wanted to see him in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just sat in front of that mirror for three to four hours and watched it all change. There were about 13 or 14 different prosthetics. Subtle, yet I think very impactful,\u201d Johnson said about his transformation. \u201cBy the time I got to set, I was Mark Kerr and I felt it, from how he walked to how he talked and how he looked at life\u2026 If Emily and I weren\u2019t best friends, I don\u2019t know that we could\u2019ve gone to the places we went to. That closeness created the trust, which then allowed for the vulnerability, which then allowed for us to go anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBlunt called Johnson\u2019s transformation an \u201ceffortless immersion\u201d into Kerr, \u201clike a full disappearance, spooky. From day one, he was elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe has absorbed and borne witness to so much of what Mark has experienced that it was such a beautiful thing to watch this person let go of having to be an image, of having to be The Rock, and crack himself in half for this role,\u201d Blunt added.<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson concluded, \u201cYou have to be willing to tap into all the stuff that you\u2019ve gone through, and this was stuff that I had not explored on camera or otherwise. I\u2019m not a big therapy person, even though I\u2019m an advocate for whatever it is you need. I found it so scary, but also, so nourishing and freeing. I ripped it open.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d world premieres in competition at the Venice Film Festival before opening in theaters Oct. 3 from A24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dwayne Johnson recently told Vanity Fair that he spent \u201cthree to four hours\u201d in the makeup chair each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,31998,75,56312],"class_list":["post-96461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dwayne-johnson","tag-entertainment","tag-the-smashing-machine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}