The 2025 movie schedule is about to unleash a film that could very well mark an important milestone for wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne Johnson. His starring role as MMA legend Mark Kerr in the upcoming biopic The Smashing Machine, saw the man also known as WWE Superstar The Rock getting a 15 minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, and word is also floating around that he may nab his first Oscar nomination for the role. Now, Kerr has opened up about visiting the set during filming, and his son’s emotional reaction to seeing Johnson portray him.
What Did Mark Kerr Say About Being On The Smashing Machine Set As Dwayne Johnson Played Him?
There are only a precious few people who will ever know what it’s like to have a film made about them (especially since such things frequently happen after said subject is no longer with us), but now early MMA/UFC fighter Mark Kerr is one of those people. Those who’ve already seen The Smashing Machine have lauded Dwayne Johnson’s “scarily unstable” performance as Kerr, while those he worked with, like co-star Emily Blunt, have talked about how he was able to “completely disappear” into the real-life character of Kerr.
If this is all making you wonder how Kerr himself responded to seeing Johnson in character when he visited the set, he recently told Sports Illustrated that it was, indeed, a trip. He remembered:
Lordy. It had to have been an immense shock to think he was going to turn around and see the man we all recognize as “DJ,” only to be met with a version of his own face from a couple of decades ago. Blunt and Johnson have previously spoken about having to be willing to do things like “rip your rib cage open” to portray a living person’s story, and it sounds a bit like Kerr experienced something similarly tough when seeing Johnson as him for the first time. He continued, and noted that his son had an even stronger response after watching the movie: