When Benny Safdie first met with Dwayne Johnson about The Smashing Machine, he came armed with a stack of VHS tapes and a vintage UFC shirt bearing the phrase “as real as it gets.” That early tagline would become the film’s guiding philosophy, and the foundation for what Johnson describes as “the most challenging journey or undertaking that I’ve had in my entire career.”
Speaking at a press conference on the morning of the film’s Berlin premiere, the trio behind The Smashing Machine — Safdie, Johnson, and Emily Blunt — revealed the extraordinary lengths they went to achieve that authenticity in bringing the story of pioneering MMA fighter Mark Kerr to life.
The Four-Hour Metamorphosis
Johnson’s physical transformation for the role required a complete reinvention, starting with four hours in the makeup chair each morning. “There’s 21 prosthetics that are just very detailed and subtle,” Johnson explained, describing the process that rendered him nearly unrecognizable as Kerr.
The transformation went far beyond prosthetics. Johnson gained 30 pounds of what he describes as “fast twitch fiber” muscle, the specific type of dense, explosive mass that defined Kerr’s physique as both an amateur wrestler and MMA pioneer. “It’s not like I can go to McDonald’s and eat burgers and shakes for the next five, six weeks to gain weight,” Johnson noted. “It was the kind of muscle you had to put on.”
But perhaps the most profound change was vocal and emotional. As Johnson adopted Kerr’s “very soft and tender” speaking voice, something deeper began to shift. For Blunt, who had worked with Johnson previously on Jungle Cruise in a much lighter context, witnessing this transformation was revelatory.
“When you walked in the first time as Mark — I hope this doesn’t sound strange — it was almost like you were so calm. There was like this sense of relief that had come up that you could be elsewhere, be someone else completely, and not have to live up to the infrastructure of this persona — The Rock — and the invincibility of that,” Blunt observed. “It was so beautiful for me to watch it happen.”
Safdie’s Reality-First Methodology
The commitment to authenticity extended to every aspect of production. Safdie built a complete house from scratch on a soundstage — running water, electricity, immovable walls, even custom carpeting — specifically designed to hide cameras and create genuine spontaneity in the domestic scenes between Kerr and his volatile girlfriend Dawn.
“So whenever we went into these scenes,” Johnson explained, “when it’s time to kick off and have these incredibly intense, raw fights as a couple — what we’ve all gone through and what we’ve all seen in life — it was real.”
For Blunt, this intensity created moments that lingered after the cameras stopped rolling. “It was hard to come down from some of those scenes.” The emotional weight was compounded by the method itself — during filming, Johnson and Blunt barely spoke between takes, a stark contrast to their playful dynamic on Jungle Cruise. “We were at opposite ends of the trailer,” Blunt recalled. “People are like, ‘you guys are such good friends.’ I was like, ‘no, we didn’t really speak on this movie.’ It was a different level.”
The film’s in-ring fights operated under similar principles. Safdie instituted a rule that no cameras were allowed inside the ring itself — they had to be positioned at a distance, forcing the crew to “fight our way through the back of people’s heads and the ropes and the apron and the turnbuckles.” More significantly, Safdie told Johnson he wanted to make the film “without ever cutting away from you,” meaning minimal use of stunt doubles.
This approach created what Johnson describes as “baptism by fire” conditions. “It meant I’m gonna get my ass kicked in the movie, which I did, happily,” he said, acknowledging the physical toll of the fight choreography.
The Costs of Authenticity
For Blunt, the relationship between Dawn and Mark offered a chance to explore something authentically messy. “What was on display, even in Benny’s script, was this opportunity for a relationship that would be full of spontaneity, that wouldn’t have to be tidy or palatable,” she said. “I think that was very exciting, to get to be a part of a relationship that could be as volatile as it was loving.”
The toxicity and deep love that existed in parallel paths felt true to her understanding of real relationships — “not all relationships,” she clarified. “Theirs might be the amplified version of bad behavior that I think we’ve all got in us.” Johnson’s physical transformation actually helped her access that emotional authenticity.
“It was helpful to me that he looked nothing like himself, so I think even in the midst of these eruptive, hazardous fights that [Dawn and Mark] had, it was very transporting for me to be looking at someone I didn’t recognize,” Blunt explained.
The emotional weight of their performances created scenes that, as Blunt put it, “would leave their fingerprints on you.” This was particularly true of a climactic fight between their characters that involved a handgun, and reached such an intense pitch that it required only a single take.
“As I’m holding her,” Johnson reflected on that scene, “I feel the force of this woman who can act 100 feet tall when she wants to. I’ve never held anyone in that way, where I have the hardest, tightest grip on this person with all my might, and the last place that this person wants to be is in my arms.”
The scene was so emotionally devastating that both actors remained motionless on the floor for 10-15 minutes after Safdie called cut, with Johnson still holding Blunt as they both recovered from the intensity of the moment. For Safdie, witnessing this level of raw emotion was both powerful and heartbreaking.
“I just remember looking [at them] and just feeling ‘well, that’s it,'” the director recalled of his decision not to shoot the scene again. “It was just like, ‘I don’t want to feel that again and I know that [Johnson and Blunt] don’t need to go through that again.’ It was a wild thing to bear witness to.”
Beyond the Performance
For Safdie, part of achieving authenticity meant casting real fighters in key roles, including former light heavyweight champion Ryan Bader and current undisputed heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk. “Having Ryan there was hard because I knew that that role really needed to be embodied by a real fighter,” Safdie explained. “He had not acted before, this was his first time, and Usyk as well.”
The director could draw on their lived experiences: “I could say to [Ryan], ‘when you win and you get to that top, what are you thinking? Like what next? Now what?’ And he’s like, ‘I had that before, you know, where you work months and months and months for this one thing. And then after five, ten minutes, it’s gone.'”
This commitment to realism extended to recreating specific shots and moments from the 2002 documentary that inspired the film. “When you try to recreate reality, you create something completely new and different,” Safdie noted. “It was almost like a test. Like, if we can make it feel and look as real as that real thing, then it just spoke to everything that was going on in the screen.”
The Character Beneath the Surface
While the physical and technical aspects of the role were demanding, Johnson identified the emotional component as his greatest challenge. What drew him to Mark Kerr’s story wasn’t the fighter’s victories or championship credentials, but something more universal yet rarified.
“The thing that drew me most to Mark Kerr was just not the wins or the losses or the fact that he was, at one time, the greatest fighter on the planet,” Johnson explained. “It was just the pressure to win that drew me to his story, and his ending, and the ability or the inability to deal with that kind of pressure. We don’t know what it’s like to be the greatest fighter on the planet. That is just rare air for certain individuals. But we all know what it’s like to feel pressure to deliver every day, regardless of what it is we do.”
“You have a guy who, by appearance, has it all together. He looks like a million dollars and he’s capable and he’s the greatest on the planet,” Johnson said of Kerr. “This guy’s got no worries, he’s got no problems — but it’s the opposite. He was very flawed and struggling, and did a good job of hiding it.”
This aspect of the performance required extensive time with the real Mark Kerr and Dawn Staples, whose willingness to be vulnerable about their past struggles proved crucial. “More importantly than our curiosity, to play them was their willingness to open up,” Johnson acknowledged.
For an actor whose career has been built on projecting invincibility and effortless charisma, finding Kerr’s wounded vulnerability represented a complete creative reversal. The result, as Safdie’s “as real as it gets” philosophy demanded, was a performance that strips away every trace of Johnson’s “The Rock” persona to reveal something far more human underneath.
The collaborative trust between Johnson and Safdie has already yielded plans for future projects, with Johnson beginning to shed his famously ripped physique for their next venture. But perhaps more significantly, The Smashing Machine demonstrates what happens when an actor known for playing larger-than-life characters commits fully to disappearing into someone else’s skin.
“You never know what people are going through,” Johnson reflected, speaking about Kerr’s hidden struggles. “They could look one way and you think, ‘oh, that guy’s got it together.’ In reality, you pull back the layers and they’re flawed too, and challenged.”
It’s a lesson that applies as much to Johnson’s own career transformation as it does to the character he portrays: sometimes the most powerful performances come from embracing vulnerability rather than projecting strength.
The Smashing Machine opens on October 2nd in Berlin, and October 3rd in the US.