ROCK.



STAR.

Premiere Magazine Interview
with Dwayne Johnson
by Steve Pond
Photography by Peggy Sirota

(Interview typed by Yolanda for Rock-Fever.net..Please ask permission to use it!)

To millions of wrestling fans, he is the People's Champion, Now, with his movie debut in The Mummy Returns, The Rock is ready to lay the smackdown on Hollywood and become the next action hero. You got a problem with that?

Last Night, 1,500 Miles Away, He Was A Star. Slick With oil and stripped to his black briefs, he paced the ring of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City while 20,000 fans chanted his name and frantically waved signs in his honor. He started sentences and they finished them; he raised an eyebrow and they exploded. He was the People's Champion, the Brahma Bull, the most electrifying man in sports entertainment, and he laid the smackdown on whatever candyass jabroni dared enter the WWF ring against him. He was, in short, The Rock.



But this afternoon, in a dusty enclosure nestled in a canyon on the west side of Los Angeles, Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a The Rock, is just another dude learning how to ride a camel. The camel in question, named Sirocco, is big enough that the six-foot-five, 250-plus pound man on its back looks almost small. Sirocco lurches to his feet, and Johnson pitches forward; Sirocco trots around the ring, and Johnson grips the reins and tries to act as though he knows what he's doing.
He'd better: In a month, when production begins on his starring vehicle The Scorpion King, Johnson's going to have to look convincing as an ancient Egyptian warrior who knows his way around a dromedary. So he's sitting atop Sirocco, acclimating himself to the awkward perch and the ungainly gait and the foul breath when his cell phone rings. He laughs, pulls the phone from the pocket of his Nike sweatpants, and conducts a little business.

Finally, The Rock has come....to Hollywood. Or, rather, Hollywood has come to The Rock, a buff 29 year old from the brawling, bombastic trenches of the enormously popular World Wrestling Federation. He has become the movie industry's greatest hope in the quest to find the Next Action Hero.
"Sly" [Stallone] and Arnie [Schwarzenegger] aren't as big they once were, "says Stephen Sommers, the writer-director of The Mummy Returns and a writer and producer of The Scorpion King. "And this guy has the whole package--Dwayne's really smart, he's got a lot of charm and a great sense of humor, he's good-looking, and he has a big fan base. And, "he adds. "he can kick the shit out of people."

Universal Pictures is banking on his potential: Even before this month's The Mummy Returns(the sequel to the 1999 hit) wrapped, studio executives pressed for Johnson to reprise his role as the centerpiece of a subsequent film. "Dwayne has developed a character in the WWF that is terrific and operatic in scope." says Chuck Russell, the director of The Scorpion King(he also helmed Jim Carrey's breakthrough, The Mask). And I promise you, he's going to come in like a storm in this genre. He's got so much raw talent and natural ability that he's already beyond the Jean-Claude Van Dammes and the Steven Seagals. I think he's going to go right to the big leagues as an action star."

In other words, the expectations are huge, It's one thing to be a six time WWF champ(and author of a New York Times number-one best-seller, The Rock Says...), but it's another matter entirely to step out of the ring, disprove the stereotype that wrestlers are steroid fueled lunkheads, and make yourself into a movie star. And Johnson, as soft spoken and politic outside of the ring as he is brash and vitriolic inside of it, shies away from making the kind of predictions you'd no doubt hear from his alter ego.

I can't speak from experience, " he says softly, "I can't say, `Yeah, I'm gonna be the action guy. `From the beginning I told all the movie people, 'I need as much help as I can possibly get. I'm not trying to fool anybody. And if I have what you guys say I have, help me get in tune with it."

He shrugs. "My goal in the World Wrestling Federation and that whole sports entertainment industry was to be the absolute best, hands down. Same thing here." A chuckle. " I'm not saying, 'Dustin Hoffman look out, 'cause The Rock is coming to Hollywood!' But in my genre, what that may be, I'll work as hard as I can to be the best."

He's saying this from the patio of a secluded Carribean chicken joint, tucked off a main street in Santa Monica, down the road from the condo he's been calling home lately.
(His main home is near Miami; when he's not on the road performing or making movies, he spends time there with his wife, a Merrill Lynch executive.) The place is nearly deserted, which is helpful, because everybody--from a passerby on the sidewalk to the guy behind the counter--recognizes The Rock.

"I was in Montreal doing The Whole Nine Yards when the WWF came up there." says actor Michael Clarke Duncan, Johnson's costar in The Scorpion King and a close friend. "When we were leaving the arena after the match, it was like being with a rock star. They had to literally close off the street, there were so many people standing outside. They mobbed his car, they followed us to this restaurant....It was ridiculous but Dwayne is so cool and so down to earth, man, that you would not even believe he's The Rock." he breaks out into a booming laugh. "I like both of 'em. If I had one of them on my left side and one on my right side, I'd be cool."

Johnson looks at a scrap of paper that one of the restaurant's employees has left at the table for him to sign. "What could the guy possibly do this this piece of paper?" he asks. "But I don't mind. It's easy to be an asshole--excuse my language--and there are too many out there. Epecially celebrities, And, hey, this is great. Five years ago, I had $7 in my pocket."

That low point came at the end of Johnson's short, unsuccessful football career. After an itinerant childhood as the son of 70s wrestler Rocky Johnson and the grandson of 60s champ Peter Maivia, Johnson went to the University of Miami on a football scholarship, where he earned a degree in criminology and played defensive tackle on the school's 1991 national championship team.
I was broke the whole time I was at Miami," he says. "I met my wife there but couldnt even afford to take her to the movies."

He expected to get drafted by the NFL, but to his disappointment he was passed over and wound up relegated to the practice squad on a Canadian Football League team. Relocating to Calgary, he slept on a stained mattress, which he had scavenged from a sleazy motel, and struggled to survive.
"I was sharing an apartment with three other guys, living on tuna fish and Hunt's tomato sauce," he says.
When he was cut by that team, he headed home. "I didnt have a car, so I had to call my parents to come get me. I knew that chapter in my life was ending."

With nothing to lose, Johnson decided to give the family business a shot. Connections got him a WWF tryout in 1996, and with surprising speed, after a minor-circuit run as Flex Kavana, he made his official WWF debut before 15,000 fans in Texas, as a smiling good guy named Rocky Maivia. He didnt catch on, though, until the following year, when his character was reinvented as a heel and given free rein to be brash and offensive.
"I was able to say whatever I wanted to say, incite a lot of emotion, and be more evocative, frankly, than anybody had ever been in our industry."Thus, Rocky Maivia turned into The Rock--and The Rock soon became a good guy again, not because he acted any nicer but because wrestling fans loved the larger than life character so much. "People know that I'm winking at them," he says of The Rock's cartoonish bravado. "Im pretty confident that they know I don't take myself too seriously."

He proved as much when he hosted Saturday Night Live in March 2000, drawing the show's best ratings all year. Johnson was a charming, comfortable performer who appeared in drag(hilarious), sang a verse of "Love Me Tender"(he's got a good voice), and rarely trotted out his wrestling persona. Afterward, his stock shot up in Hollywood; with the support of a core group advisers, which include WWF chairman Vince McMahon, Johnson decided to ease into a movie career with a flashy but small, largely nonspeaking role in The Mummy Returns.
"I knew that he was a really nice guy and that he was eager to learn, but I didnt know if he could act," Sommers says, "But when I saw Saturday Night Live, I knew we were in good shape."

Johnson himself wasnt in the best of shape when the movie began filming in Morocco. He was, in his own words, "sick as a dog," huddled beneath blankets, shivering even though it was 128 degrees on the first day of shooting. But when he dragged himself out to film strenous battle scenes, "he didnt flinch," the director says.

Which is not to say that Johnson--or even his character--is unstoppable. Sure, in The Mummy Returns, the Scorpion King character is, Johnson says, "the fiercest, bravest, kickass warrior that has ever walked the face of the earth"; but in The Scorpion King, which will be a more adventure-oriented, less supernatural prequel, he promises something different.

As large and as big and as popular as The Rockis, The Rock is still vulnerable, which is the key," Johnson says. "You can only be Superman for so long before people go, "Thats great, but I can't relate to that. You see that everyweek with The Rock: He can get his butt whipped the whole match, but the one thing that people can count on is that this guy will fight and fight until he cant fight anymore.
Same thing in The Scorpion King. He cant be the baddest dude walking the planet. It's boring. But he can be the guy who never quits fighting." He grins. "You see that in Arnold's films, and I've always appreciated that. You didnt see that in Steven Seagal movies, you know?"

Johnson signs the autograph or the cook, then gets prepped for his next meeting; even though he's been on the go since 6 A.M, rising early after last night's WWF taping in Kansas City, he's still got a marketing powwow to attend. He laughs but isnt really joking when he says thats he's looking forward to shooting The Scorpion King because it'll mean a few months off from doing WWF shows every Monday and Tuesday night. "It'll seem like a vacation," he says, "considering I'll have two days off every week."

Afterward, he'll head back to Miami, where his wife is expecting their first child in late August.
"I certainly wouldnt push the wrestling on him or her, he says of siring a possible fourth-generation wrestler. "But it's a wonderful industry to be in."

Though it's probably not big enough to hold onto Johnson.
Asked if he could see the day when he'll leave his wrestling career and focus exclusively on movies, he pauses briefly, then nods. "Absolutely," he says quietly. "That's the first time I've ever said that. But, yeah. Making movies, you don't get a live audience with 30,000 people, you don't get the immediate reaction, but you're able to tell longer stories, and it's great. Having done my first film--boy, this is what I want to do."