The Challenges of Transitioning from Wrestling to Hollywood
For anyone who has spent time on the set of a major studio film, it’s clear that one of the most essential elements in the filmmaking process is patience. There is a lot of repetition involved, with multiple takes executed from different angles, and there’s often a significant amount of downtime between setups as various departments work on ensuring everything looks perfect on camera. This is not what one might expect from an outside perspective, especially for someone like John Cena, who entered the film industry after becoming a star in the big and flashy world of WWE.
Cena is now recognized as a multi-talented performer, even being dubbed the GOAT of wrestlers-turned-actors by his co-star Idris Elba in The Suicide Squad and Heads of State. However, in a recent career retrospective interview, he revealed that his first experience in movies—specifically making The Marine in 2006—was a deeply unsatisfying time. At the time, he wasn’t familiar with the “hurry up and wait” nature of Hollywood, which led to frustration.
When he went to film The Marine in 2004 or 2005, he was still at the peak of his WWE career, having just become a world champion and traveling to different towns every night, performing for audiences that were always going wild. Then, he found himself in Australia, where the pace was completely different. He described the experience as being in a place of “library silence” where they only shot one explosion a day. He admitted he hated it because he wasn’t ready for the patience required.
In the video, Cena’s reflection comes from a discussion about his time working on F9, where he plays the brother of Vin Diesel’s Dom Torretto. Watching a clip from the blockbuster where his character gets tackled while flying on a zipline, he notes the precision that went into the action sequence. While he could now appreciate the level of detail, it had driven him crazy early in his career.
Cena doesn’t stop there. He makes a direct link between being patient and expressing gratitude, and he feels that he didn’t have enough of either in the mid-2000s. Rather than making films because he wanted to make films, he was simply trying to boost his personal image as a wrestler. He now realizes that he wasn’t the best version of himself at the time.
When reflecting on his career, he admits that he didn’t appreciate the opportunities he had. He also acknowledges that he made a lot of “shitty movies,” which is why he took a break from acting for a while. He believes he should have been run out of town for not appreciating the work and for not putting his heart into the characters or the process.
This story, however, has a happy ending. Around 2015, he started to turn some heads with his skills. A standout moment was his scene-stealing supporting role in Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck. This was followed by a few years of demonstrating range in both comedy and action-centric blockbusters, such as Blockers and Bumblebee. His career has only gotten better and more exciting since then, with his greatest work to date being his collaboration with James Gunn in Peacemaker.
Speaking of Peacemaker, the brand new Season 2 of the show has now launched, with the premiere debuting for HBO Max subscribers last week. The story promises a whole lot of insanity to come, and new episodes drop on the streaming service every Thursday.
