Dwayne Johnson takes on his most dramatic role yet in Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine,” playing UFC champion Mark Kerr. At the film’s Venice Film Festival press conference, the action star revealed that he’s been wanting to expand his repertoire for a while now.
“I have, for a long time, wanted this,” Johnson said, sitting alongside director Safdie and co-star Emily Blunt, who plays Kerr’s girlfriend Dawn. “The three of us have talked for a very long time about, when you’re in Hollywood — as we all know, it had become about box office. And you chase the box office, and the box office can be very loud and it can become very resounding and it can push you into a category and a corner. This is your lane and this is what you do and this is what Hollywood wants you to do.”
Johnson, who is best known for blockbusters like “Jumanji,” ‘Black Adam” and “Fast and Furious,” said he’s loved making those movies and “they were fun and some were really good and did well, and some not so good.” But he wanted something more.
“I just had this burning desire and voice that was saying, ‘What if there is more and what if I can?’ Sometimes it’s hard for us to know what we’re capable of when we’ve been pigeonholed into something,” he said. I”t’s harder to know what you’re capable of, and sometimes it takes people that you know and love, like Emily and Benny, to say that you can. I looked around a few years ago and I started to think, you know, am I living my dream or am I living other people’s dreams? You come to that recognition and I think you can either fall in line or go, I want to live my dreams now and do what I wanna do … I’ve been scared to go deep and intense and raw until now, until I had this opportunity.”
“The Smashing Machine” chronicles Kerr’s triumphs in the ring, as well as his addiction to painkillers and tumultuous relationship with then-wife Dawn Staples (Blunt). Johnson is nearly unrecognizable in the film, undergoing pounds of prosthetics to portray the hulking two-time UFC Heavyweight champ.
“The Smashing Machine” marks the solo feature directorial debut of Benny Safdie, who worked with his older brother, Josh, on indie favorites like “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time.”