Over time, Diesel has voiced his own oblique observations about this situation. He has put down their differences to them being two alpha males (Johnson: “Sounds like him to say that, sure”); characterized Johnson, perhaps slightly patronizingly, as Hollywood’s second “multicultural megastar” whom he’s proud to see following in his footsteps (Johnson: “He talks like that”); and said that “I protected Dwayne more than he’ll ever know…but he appreciates it. He knows he only has one big brother in the film world, and that’s me.” (Johnson: “I have one big brother and it’s my half brother. And that’s it.”)
Then, this summer, in an interview in Men’s Health, Diesel returned to the subject, casting any conflict as the benign side effect of purposeful method manipulation on his part. “My approach at the time was a lot of tough love to assist in getting that performance where it needed to be. As a producer to say, Okay, we’re going to take Dwayne Johnson, who’s associated with wrestling, and we’re going to force this cinematic world, audience members, to regard his character as someone that they don’t know—Hobbs hits you like a ton of bricks. That’s something that I’m proud of, that aesthetic. That took a lot of work. We had to get there and sometimes, at that time, I could give a lot of tough love. Not Fellini-esque, but I would do anything I’d have to do in order to get performances in anything I’m producing.”
Reminded of this quote, Johnson at first simply bellows with laughter.
“You know, I’ll tell you this,” he says eventually. “One part of me feels like there’s no way I would dignify any of that bullshit with an answer. But here’s the truth. I’ve been around the block a lot of times. Unlike him, I did not come from the world of theater. And, you know, I came up differently and was raised differently. And I came from a completely different culture and environment. And I go into every project giving it my all. And if I feel that there’s some things that need to be squared away and handled and taken care of, then I do it. And it’s just that simple. So when I read that, just like everybody else, I laughed. I laughed hard. We all laughed. And somewhere I’m sure Fellini is laughing too.”
Other collaborators think of Johnson far more fondly. Ryan Reynolds, who costars in this month’s Red Notice, has known him for 20 years. (By odd coincidence, he hitched a ride on the same plane with us back from Cancún in 2002.) “The thing that sets him apart,” Reynolds says, “is obviously he’s kind of superhuman in stature and looks and charisma and all those things, but he has an innate ability to always laugh at himself. And that, in and of itself, is a superpower, you know? I mean, that opens the door, you know, spiritually, emotionally, and literally. I think that’s always been in his arsenal, and that’s always been the thing that I think really allows people in.” He offers a further observation: “I think sort of the allure of D.J. is that to a certain extent he wears his heart on his sleeve, and there is, underneath the muscles—which are all, by the way, spray-on muscles, I found out when we were shooting—he is incredibly vulnerable.”
Emily Blunt, who starred with Johnson in Jungle Cruise, echoes the sentiment. “I know the first thing everyone notices is that colossal framework of a human, but what people who really know him well know is that held inside it is this equally oceanic compassion and humility,” she says. “He’s got this sort of blazing charisma that he’s really known for, but he’s quite shy and introverted. He’s an interesting and very rare mix of really confident and really humble.” Blunt adds: “He also happens to be a tequila-swilling, fun-as-hell hang, and he’s got the filthiest laugh in the world.”
You get some sense of Blunt and Johnson’s comic antagonist-buddies rapport in Jungle Cruise, but a more untethered version can be seen in some of the interviews they did together to promote the film. “He has no boundaries whatsoever,” Blunt tells me. “He’s a very confusing person, because he’s the most polite gentleman in the world, and then he will just push the boundaries until he is saying things that will just make your head spin to make you laugh…. I think that he’s got this rebellious kid in him that won’t be straitjacketed.” In one interview, asked what they would take into the jungle, Johnson suggested Vagisil for Blunt, who, not to be outdone, countered with anal beads for her costar. This is not how Disney family films are generally plugged, and Johnson concedes that this particular conversation provoked concern. “I can’t tell you,” he says, “how quick we got those calls: ‘We really love your chemistry and what you guys are doing—but can we dial it back a little bit on the anal beads?’ ” Not that he was particularly of a mind to listen. If your true imperative is to be yourself, you have to let that water flow where it needs to flow.
“I don’t like to feel like I have constraints on or am trying to fit a mold or ‘This is how it’s done, so this is how you should do it,’ ” he says. “I do have a little bit of a challenge with that. Maybe a lot of a challenge. And so when they say ‘Dial it back,’ I say, ‘Sure! Watch this!’ ”
Red Notice, with Reynolds and Gal Gadot, appears on Netflix this month. (Rawson Thurber, who wrote and directed it, calls it “an old-school, globe-trotting swashbuckler action-adventure comedy writ large: big action, big laughs, big stars, big twists.” Which is actually a pretty fair description. It is also, says Johnson, “the biggest movie Netflix has invested in.”) Production was suspended for lockdown, during which first Lauren, then both young girls, and then Johnson caught COVID. Johnson kept posting on Instagram as though nothing was happening; he didn’t want people to know, not while he was still working out how bad this might be. “It was a daunting time,” he says, “because you never know how sideways this can go.” In the end, none of them suffered too much. Lauren’s symptoms were the worst. Johnson just had some fatigue and body aches, no fever, but he did lose his sense of taste and smell for a month.
