SimplyAbuDhabi XXXVIII

D wayne “The Rock” Johnson is one of the most beloved and highest-grossing actors in the world. As a third-generation professional wrestler – the son of the late Rocky Johnson and grandson of the late Peter Maivia – Johnson grew up in a resilient family, surrounded by wild characters from the world of professional wrestling to become the person he is today. Now Johnson’s formative years are the subject for a new sitcom called “Young Rock”, starring Adrian Groulx, Bradley Constant and Uli Latukefi as younger versions of Johnson and Joseph Lee Anderson as Dwayne’s father Rocky. The series was created by Nahnatchka “Natch” Khan and Jeff Chiang. Johnson sat down with Lucy Allen of The Interview People to share his insights into the show and reflections on his childhood. Firstly, Dwayne, what can you tell us about how this show came to be? DWAYNE JOHNSON: The truth is that once we understood what we felt – myself, Natch, Jeff Chiang, and writers Brian Gewirtz and Hiram Garcia – once we realised our pathway creatively, we went in and pitched the idea. Luckily enough, within about 10 minutes, the meeting stopped and they said, “There’s something really unique here and we’re in. Now let’s continue to work on it.” Can you talk about casting wrestling legends on the show, both within Dwayne’s family and outside it? Might we see any actual wrestlers make cameos? DWAYNE JOHNSON: You know, from my perspective, it was truly a love letter to professional wrestling, which is a business that I grew up in and a business that I’ve loved all of my life. I’ve learned some of my most valuable, while very unorthodox, lessons from the world of pro wrestling. So it was amazing to be able to highlight and showcase these men who were, in essence, my superheroes. All the actors we cast really, truly embodied these professional wrestlers. And I will say that for Joseph Lee Anderson to play my dad in such an uncanny way and, not only him, but all of our actors were so committed to these roles. It was a very tall order, especially for Joseph, because he had to go from not being a professional wrestler to actually learning how to you wrestle professionally, which is an incredibly difficult thing to do. And my dad was a bad dude in the game, and he had a lot of charisma and he had tons of athletic ability, and Joseph really did a tremendous job. I’m embarrassing him now, but I was really quite proud of not only Joseph but so proud of our entire cast. How important was it for you to subvert the perfect sit-com dad trope, and portray something that was really quite complicated and real? DWAYNE JOHNSON: Thank you for saying that and thank you for your question. The most important thing, when I first sat down with Nahnatchka as well as Jeff, was to really understand the real reason why we’re going to do this? How can we create something for audiences that hopefully will entertain them, but also allow them a bit of a takeaway afterward? And once we had identified that and I felt comfortable with that, then we moved forward. So, to answer your question, I thought, well, let’s not take the easy route. Simply Abu Dhabi | 99