Dwayne Johnson’s non-negotiable rule on set: “We just have the policy here”
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dwayne Johnson was one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling under the moniker ‘The Rock’, a key player in WWE’s much-lauded ‘Attitude Era’, and took a major risk when he gave that all up to pursue a movie career, but, after a few false stars, he turned that into a successful career too.
It takes a lot to reach the pinnacle of your chosen profession, and even more to do it twice, and Johnson has also technically conquered a third field with music, as his song ‘You’re Welcome’ from the Moana soundtrack went six times platinum. Is there nothing he can’t do?
As the ‘Brahma Bull’ enters the next phase of his career with The Smashing Machine, now is as good a time as ever to look back at his career and try to work out how he’s managed to do so much. It takes an incredible amount of discipline to be this successful, and it turns out Johnson can distil his winning ways down to a simple formula.
Speaking to eTalk to promote his 2024 Christmas movie Red One, which he also co-produced through his company Seven Bucks, he discussed what it was like to share a set with so many big names, like Chris Evans, JK Simmons, Lucy Liu, and more. Speaking specifically about Evans, the former WWE champion revealed the one rule he tries to stick to with all of his co-stars.
“I feel like also, you know, reputations, especially in Hollywood, they precede us,” he said, “Even though we’ve never worked together, I had heard that he [Chris Evans] was an awesome guy, and that was important. We have a policy for Seven Bucks Productions, and just for me, too, as well. Like we’ve reached this point in our career, we’re like, we don’t work with assholes anymore.”
Red One received a brief theatrical run before landing on Amazon Prime just in time for the holidays. It follows Johnson as Santa Claus’ bodyguard and Evans as a hacker on the naughty list as they attempt to rescue jolly old Saint Nick from nefarious kidnappers. Additionally, the buff wrestler had a lot of good reasons to be good on set for his fee for the movie was reportedly an eye-watering $50million, the highest in film history.
Ironically, reports from the set of Red One seem to indicate that Johnson doesn’t play by his own rules, as he was accused of driving up the film’s budget by repeatedly being late, sometimes running seven or eight hours behind schedule. In an effort to combat this tardiness, he supposedly wouldn’t go to the toilet, instead urinating in bottles so he wouldn’t have to leave the lot. Johnson claims that, while some of these allegations are true, some of the stories have been exaggerated.
It’s entirely possible that his “no assholes” rule might have just been a nice line for the press, and while it’s a good idea in principle, it would have worked out better if, you know, he’d actually stuck to it.
