Emily Blunt was feeling a bit queasy on the set of the biographical sports drama The Smashing Machine.
Blunt, 42, revealed that one scene in particular filmed at a fair alongside costar Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson led to her vomiting multiple times.
“I got so sick,” the actress recalled of riding the Gravitron ride during a recent episode of Entertainment Weekly‘s “The Awardist” podcast. “I actually puked when I got home. It was awful.”
The Gravitron went upside-down, something Johnson’s character wasn’t too keen on, but Blunt decided to fully commit to the bit. Johnson, 53, who has a longstanding friendship with Blunt, was supportive, adding, “She was a trooper. She rode that thing twice.”
The Smashing Machine tells the story of former MMA fighter Mark Kerr (Johnson), whose struggles with addiction led to the collapse of his marriage to Dawn Staples (Blunt).
“Dawn was someone who was always chasing wildness, was part of the hazardous nature of that relationship or that addiction to drama, to wildness, to freedom,” Blunt said of playing Kerr’s wife. “I think Mark was probably always trying to seek solace from madness, ’cause his life was always on the line, whether it was in the ring or down that rabbit hole of his own addiction.”
Blunt continued, “So that Gravitron ride for her is like that full flight of freedom, and you see her so joyful. It was an important moment for me, for the character who’s fairly tormented most of the movie, that she’s joyful and she’s alive, and she’s away from him. So it was quite an important moment that he is on the outside of being able to access that in her.”
To accurately portray Kerr, Johnson underwent a dramatic transformation with prosthetics that required him to sit in the makeup chair for three to four hours each day. Blunt remembered what it was like to see Johnson in character for the first time on set.
“Everyone went very quiet, which I’m sure must have been very unnerving for DJ walking in. Everyone just stared. I almost cried because it was such an immersion, not just physically,” she she said. “For me, what was more interesting and captivating was the energetic shift. I consider myself someone who knows DJ pretty well, and he was gone — like, completely gone.”
Blunt said she felt like Johnson had a sense of “relief” wash over him after getting into character.
“That really moved me, that he looked very peaceful as Mark,” Blunt explained. “I’ve watched him for years be this colossal movie star, which is not for the faint of heart, and it’s actually not easy — you have to be born with that kind of charisma that he has, naturally and the ability to sort of pull audiences into his heart, even if it’s in a Fast and Furious. But it was just really amazing to see the relief to not have to be invincible or the Rock, any of those qualities which are not actually true to who we are as human beings.”
Overall, Blunt felt The Smashing Machine was a “cathartic experience” for her and her costars, adding, “We knew it was gonna be very exposing humanly, and you learn a lot about yourself and about the people that you’re working with.”
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