‘The Other Side of Dwayne Johnson’: How does this biopic offer the star one of the best roles of his career?

From Jumanji to Fast & Furious, where he’s set to return after burying his hatchet with Vin Diesel, to Jungle Cruise, Red Notice and more Red Ones, we feared Dwayne Johnson would never deliver action movies, optional comedies where he played himself more than anything else. And it’s not the anti-hero he plays in DC’s opus Black Adam that changed everything, so much so that hopes of seeing a biopic on 90s mixed martial arts pioneer Mark Kerr are fading.

Until December 2023 and this announcement, which we no longer expected: called Smashing Machine, the feature film would definitely see the light of day, and it would be the first opus directed by Benny Safdie alone, without his brother Josh, who left to make another biopic (Marty Supreme with Timothée Chalamet, scheduled for February 2026 in France).

Filmed between May and August 2024 and successfully screened at the Venice Film Festival a few months ago, where it won the Silver Lion for directing, Smashing Machine is finally in our cinemas and reminds us of the time when Dwayne Johnson transcended his status as a former wrestler who went from the ring to the set and managed to surprise us. Although it is impossible to imagine such a project without him, as much as what he tells about the suffering of the body and the sacrifices made for art resonates with his journey, he manages to get out of his comfort zone.

Thanks to the physical transformation with many prostheses and makeup to cover his impressive tattoos (and add scars on the body of Mark Carrey), and the portrait of a pioneer who will have to adapt to changes and try to stay high, so as not to stand on one knee and not show toxicity to his wife, which Emily Junglas will find four years later.

While waiting to see if it will bring him the Oscar that people are already talking about (or even a nomination) and if this is a turning point or a simple side step in his career, Benny Safdie returns with us to this collaboration, the challenges of this first solo feature and the way we can (or not) avoid the shadow of the rock when we make a film about sports.

AlloCiné: Who initiated this project? Did you come to find Dwayne Johnson or did he come to find you?

Benny Safdie : he is. He came to me and Josh in 2019, then covid happened and the idea disappeared. And that’s after the curse is over That I wanted to make a movie again and I never stopped thinking about it after he told us that he wanted to play Mark Carrey in a movie. I had also seen a documentary about him So I knew I had to do something about it and I kept thinking about it.

It was hard for me because I felt like I had a really interesting relationship with Mark and Dwayne, so I reconnected with the latter after watching it. I met Emily Blunt on the set of Oppenheimer and told her that I knew they were friends: I really decided to contact her because I had a feeling of unfinished business. I wanted to make this film and it created a bond between us.

To what extent did you identify with Mark?

I felt I understood his position. To understand what he experienced and what difficulties he faced. I saw members of my family struggle with addictions, and there was the fact that being a filmmaker, you had a specific goal and you had to involve your partner in making it happen. I saw a lot of parallels between her life and mine, about how important it is to know how to take your partner with you instead of pulling them away. There are these things about Mark that people couldn’t understand and couldn’t see because it was what was happening to him that he didn’t want others to see: I don’t want people to look at me and think that’s who I am, to use my sadness as an excuse.

No one knows what you are going through or what you have been through in the past. It’s the idea that we imagine a person in a certain way, without knowing what they’re fighting in the shadows, and the story of Smashing Machine is especially about that.

“I saw a lot of parallels between Mark Kerr’s life and my own”

And that might apply to Dwayne Johnson: People think maybe he just wants to do action and comedies, when what he really dreams of doing are dramatic roles like this.

Yes, and I felt it. I think if you like Dwayne Johnson and his movies, you’ll like this because it shows a different side of him. He is different in this and his performance is extraordinary because he literally becomes a different person. really It’s like you can’t see him play because he is. He identifies so much with what Mark is going through that he has become Mark and thus discovers the other side of him. The film was very rewarding for him in terms of this notion of self-discovery. When I act, I use my emotions and feelings to connect with the character I’m playing and that’s what brought him here.

It was as if he found that he could take inspiration from all of this and combine it into something else and play with it. It was wonderful for him to perform this performance, even more so in a combat film. Because that’s the heart of Smashing Machine, but the human side of the fight, because it’s also a matter of internal struggle.

I saw another parallel between you and Mark: in the film, he has to rethink his work and art after the rule changes, and this is your first feature film without your brother Josh, so you had to approach it differently. Why did you identify with him like that?

(laughs) It’s possible, I don’t know. Usually when you’re a fighter, you’re on your own, so there’s something like that. But above all, I saw in this film an opportunity to express myself, and it is somewhat of a solitary adventure.

Did you work with Dwayne Johnson on the script because he was involved with the project from the beginning?

Yes, I am very open when I work. The idea of ​​welcoming whoever wants to is part of the process. I could talk to Dwayne about a scene I wrote, then rewrite it over and over based on what he told me, and I didn’t have a problem because he was part of the equation as well. For example, we had two or three meetings around the scene where Dwayne and Emily fight, just to talk about it, go over the dialogue, see what was written too much, figure out certain steps. This allows the actors and actresses to fully invest in their performance. If they manage to bring something into character, they will stick with it and perform better.

What was more difficult for you to shoot: the argument scenes or the fights?

Dwayne and Emily’s fight was the most emotionally draining because we spent all day on it. It’s eight minutes and thirty seconds long, and the framing had to be very precise because I had several cameras hidden: one in the living room on Dwayne, and one in his house. I had to zoom in so they couldn’t see them and so we had to hide them especially behind the walls to create an impression. It took us a while, but I shot it like the fights.

They were also very difficult to shoot because I wanted them to be realistic. We spent a day on each of the fight scenes between Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Bader, who plays Mark Coleman, divided into ten segments, each segment representing five to seven moves. We shot from two angles, with two cameras on one side, two on the other and one on the balcony, we paid attention to the shots so that each shot looked real from all angles.

When you’re shooting this kind of film, there’s generally only one angle where the illusion will be perfect, so you put everything into it. But if you’re working on this camera and that camera, you’ll get multiple views of the same image, allowing you to go from one angle to another and make it look like it was all done once. This is a magic trick (laughs)

“I should have known that everyone has seen Rocky, that everyone loves these movies”

And that should help the likes of Dwayne Johnson, who is already used to being in the ring.

Of course! Like hiring real fighters. Everyone was very comfortable in the ring, but Dwayne had to learn how to actually fight. How to look at and understand things.

We also see him on the stairs in the “training montage”: how hard is it to escape the shadow of “The Rock” when you’re making a movie like this around a fighter?

I mentioned in the script that he ran up the stairs, but there was no celebration when he got to the top, and that’s a big difference. I should know that everyone saw the rock. That everyone loves these movies. I saw it and I also like it, so I decided to include it anyway, but using it “my way” Elvis’ version in 1973, therefore, at the end of his career and his life. He sings differently, not as strong as before, but you can hear his weakness in his voice. And so I submitted to editing, but in a different way.

Commentary collected by Maximilien Pierret in Paris on October 23, 2025