Dwayne Johnson says playing Mark Kerr is the hardest thing he’s ever done

We all know that Dwayne Johnson is a big dude. So when Johnson says he found transforming into Mark Kerr for The Smashing Machine to be the biggest challenge of his career, that’s saying something. The easiest thing, of course, is turning any WWE event of his choosing into being about himself.

Johnson recently spoke with Variety over what it meant to turn into Mark Kerr for The Smashing Machine, saying, “This transformation was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There was a physical transformation, prosthetics, vocal transformation — he has a very specific way of talking. When I first got together with Benny [Safdie, director], we watched tapes of Mark, and Benny said, ‘I want to film this and never cut away from you.’ I knew what that meant. He said, ‘I don’t want to cut away. I want to shoot this cinéma vérité, with a prowling camera. You have a great stunt double, but I don’t want to use him.’”

Safdie would go on to tell Johnson that he would need to gain weight to play Mark Kerr, with the actor putting on 30 pounds, but having to do so through certain methods. “It’s not just gaining weight. It’s putting on a quality of muscle that has fast-twitch capacity. He’s a wrestler. It’s not about bodybuilding. I’ve never done so much trap and neck work in my life. Old-school wrestlers with no necks? That’s what I had to do. And I held that weight for three and a half months. Then, two weeks later, I had to roll into ‘Moana.’ So it was Mark Kerr and Maui. Big dudes.”

By and large, Dwayne Johnson is really only talking about the look of Mark Kerr. But by most accounts, Johnson goes well beyond that and has given a performance that very well could find him in the Best Actor race at the Oscars (I personally don’t predict him making the cut, but at the very least he’s guaranteed a spot at the Golden Globes). And A24 is going all in on the publicity, making sure Johnson stays in the conversation. The Smashing Machine opens on October 3rd. You can read our 9/10 review here.

Do you think Dwayne Johnson will land a Best Actor nomination?

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