Dwayne Johnson: 'The Smashing Machine' fights with Emily Blunt 'hurt my heart' |

25/09/2025 15:00 -

Dwayne Johnson is no stranger to physical roles having worked for years as a professional wrestler and then a Hollywood action movie star.

But going toe-to-toe with Emily Blunt on the set of The Smashing Machine was an ordeal unlike anything "The Rock" had experienced before.

A biopic detailing the highs and lows of UFC Hall of Fame fighter Mark Kerr's career, The Smashing Machine features Johnson as Kerr and Blunt as Kerr's partner Dawn Staples. The film primarily focuses on Kerr's time competing in Japan following a successful UFC run in which he won two heavyweight tournaments and then facing struggles in and out of the ring.

As grueling as the reenactments of Kerr's famous fights were to duplicate on screen, Johnson felt an even deeper pain filming the domestic battles between Kerr and Staples, which saw Blunt drag Johnson into deep waters and help him deliver a performance that is already garnering Academy Award buzz.

"Emily is one of the greatest actors of our time and of all-time, period," Johnson said at a recent media scrum alongside Kerr and director Benny Safdie. "She acts 10 feet tall when she wants to and rooted from the ground up in her acting. Those scenes hurt my heart and they hurt Benny's heart and Emily's and they hurt Mark's heart and they're hard to watch.

"As Benny has said, I've heard him say so beautifully, when you love somebody so much and so hard as Mark and Dawn did, as couples out there do, sometimes it's the ones you love most that you can have the most raw, meanest of fights with."

To keep up with Blunt, a decorated dramatic actress recently nominated for an Oscar for her work in Oppenheimer, Johnson drew upon his youth growing up with parents who fought and eventually divorced. He also credits Safdie with creating an on-set atmosphere in which the performers were encouraged to act as if the scene was only happening "one time, just like in real life," as Johnson puts it.

As difficult as those scenes were for Johnson and Blunt, seeing them play out on screen took an even greater toll on the Kerr, the man who lived them. Johnson recalls the intense reaction Kerr had when the two attended a film festival screening in Venice.

"When we were at the Venice Film Festival, this was the first time that I had sat next to Mark watching the film before," Johnson said. "He'd seen it a couple of times on his own and he and I were together like this and he's a big boy and I feel his body, this whole time watching this, and every time those fights would happen with Mark and Dawn his body would begin to shake. I looked over at one point towards the end, the big fight scene, and Benny's holding his hand, and he held his hand, he just kept it there for the rest of the movie."

For Kerr, who went on to marry and later divorce Staples, it was surreal seeing his life replayed on film, even after being the subject of a documentary of the same name that came out in 2002 (Safdie modeled several scenes in his version of The Smashing Machine on John Hyams's documentary).

The scenes even gave Kerr new perspective on his complicated and often volatile relationship with Staples.

"It was almost like therapy and it sounds weird to even say it like that," Kerr said. "Just how real it was and how raw it was, for the first time I could actually see parts of what I was responsible for and it was this existential looking at from this perspective that I never saw it before. It hit me at Venice to the point where it's just like I'm weeping. Weeping.

"'DJ' feels it and Benny feels it because they know how intense that is for me to relive those moments and stuff. It just speaks to where he went and where Emily went, it was just incredible to just watch."

As far as the difference between directing Johnson in the ring and in the household, Safdie says there was definitely a connection and a shared rhythm between those aspects of Kerr's life and how they chose to depict them.

So when it came time for Johnson and Blunt to throw down, particularly in a climactic domestic clash near the film's conclusion, there were no holds barred.

"It's interesting that you made the connection between the fights in the ring and the fights out because to do that specific fight, I was like, you know what, I'm going to approach this the same way," Safdie said. "Sections. Because we would do the fights in sections because we really wanted to be very true to what it feels like to be–because there’s a speed at which those fights happen in the ring. I remember saying, 'I want to know what it’s like to be taken down' and then all of a sudden you're just like, 'I'm going down.' There’s no way you can control it, just it happens so fast. It was like, OK, let's put these into bite-size physicality moments and move through the fights that way.

"Specifically with this one, it's like an eight-and-a-half minute fight between them where it's in different phases. This is Round 1, this is Round 2, and that that’s how those go down. It really was, like, OK, let’s focus on this, let’s get this down, and then they build in ways and then you say things that you feel really bad about and then you have to live with that and you think how am I going to overcome that? There's a whole wave of things that go through and it's just intense."