Dwayne Johnson’s Toughest ‘The Smashing Machine’ Scenes Took Place Outside the Ring
As both a WWE Superstar and a Hollywood actor, Dwayne Johnson has seen his fair share of battles, but going toe-to-toe with Emily Blunt on the set of The Smashing Machine may have been his most difficult.
Scheduled to hit theaters on October 3, the film will see Johnson step into the shoes of former UFC and PRIDE fighting legend Mark Kerr. The biopic will primarily focus on Kerr’s time competing in Japan following his success inside the Octagon and the ensuing struggles he endured both in and out of the ring.
Previously, ‘The Rock’ detailed some of the grueling fight sequences in the film, including an incident where one of his on-screen opponents left him seeing stars from an all-too-real punch.
However, that seemingly paled in comparison to the pain he felt while filming the domestic battles between Kerr and his partner, Dawn Staples.
“Emily is one of the greatest actors of our time and of all-time, period,” Johnson said at a recent media scrum alongside Kerr and director Benny Safdie. “She acts 10 feet tall when she wants to and rooted from the ground up in her acting. Those scenes hurt my heart and they hurt Benny’s heart and Emily’s and they hurt Mark’s heart and they’re hard to watch.
“As Benny has said, I’ve heard him say so beautifully, when you love somebody so much and so hard as Mark and Dawn did, as couples out there do, sometimes it’s the ones you love most that you can have the most raw, meanest of fights with.”
Blunt and Johnson are no strangers to one another. The two co-starred together in Disney’s attraction-based blockbuster Jungle Cruise in 2021. A couple of years later, Blunt would go on to captivate audiences in Oppenheimer, earning herself an Oscar nomination.
Dwayne Johnson Recalls Mark Kerr’s reaction to seeing The Smashing Machine
Despite the challenges faced by Johnson and Blunt during those scenes, witnessing them unfold on screen had an even more profound impact on Kerr, the individual who experienced them firsthand. Johnson remembers the strong response Kerr exhibited when the two were present at a film festival screening in Venice.
“When we were at the Venice Film Festival, this was the first time that I had sat next to Mark watching the film before,” Johnson said. “He’d seen it a couple of times on his own and he and I were together like this and he’s a big boy and I feel his body, this whole time watching this, and every time those fights would happen with Mark and Dawn his body would begin to shake.
“I looked over at one point towards the end, the big fight scene, and Benny’s holding his hand, and he held his hand, he just kept it there for the rest of the movie.”
