WSVN-TV Entertainment’s Chris Van Vliet recently sat down with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and spoke with the former WWE Superstar and current A-list Hollywood star about what led him to leave wrestling to pursue a full-time career as an actor, how some of the stuff he did in WWE helped with his latest movie and more. Below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On how using his singing voice in WWE helpled him prepare to be in the new Disney animated film, “MOANA”:
“What really helped was Lin-Manuel Miranda who wrote the music for our movie, did a lot of research and he pulled up all of those old concerts that I used to do in a WWE ring where I’m singing and I’m talking and I’m singing and I’m talking s–t. He had the greatest time doing that and he thought the perfect song for me would be a song called ‘You’re Welcome’. Lin’s a genius, I loved working with him. He’s phenomenal. So when he sent me the song I thought ‘OK, sounds good. I can do this’ and then it goes into a rap and I thought ‘alright, I’m down. Let’s do this. I’ll spit that fire!’”
On why voicing an animated character is one of the hardest roles he has had in Hollywood thus far:
“It was a great challenge for me because it was a different muscle to exercise. It’s one thing when we’re just talking like this, but it’s another thing to really inject life into your voice and intonation.”
On what motivated him to finally leave WWE to pursue a full-time career as an actor:
“I wanted to challenge myself. And I wanted to be better. And I didn’t want to settle. I was really fortunate to accomplish what I accomplished in wrestling. I loved it. There’s nothing like wrestling. That crowd, I love it. But I also wanted more and there’s that interesting thing when you’re lucky enough to get that little bit of success and then you want to do something else that’s not your forte, that clearly is not, but you’re willing to take the challenge on, you’re met with a lot of cynicism. You gotta fight through that and you gotta listen to the voice inside and then you gotta bring it.”
