Many unflattering stories about Johnson have emerged lately. Photo / Getty Images
Hollywood’s greatest people pleaser has been accused of causing havoc on set with his chronic lateness. But that’s not all.
Known for its distinctive rectangular containers and throat-drying prices, Voss bottled water is the refreshment of choice for many celebrities. It’s also useful when you need to go to the toilet, but don’t want to use a public facility. Just ask the world’s cuddliest action hero, Dwayne Johnson, aka wrestling icon The Rock.
That Johnson is partial to the occasional tinkle in a bottle has been on the public record for some time. He boasted about it in an interview with Esquire, saying, “I usually stay pretty hydrated. I need to go to the bathroom a lot … A couple of times during every workout, I have to go to the bathroom. So I break out the bottle.”
He presented it as a fun anecdote — another humanising story from a celebrity who has climbed from hard-scrabble poverty in Hawaii to become the world’s biggest movie star and, until recently, an A-lister eying a shot at the White House. But Johnson’s loopy loo habit has now been cast in a more negative light amid allegations of unusual on-set behaviour — mutterings that could sink his (already pretty moribund) political hopes once and for all.
It isn’t only that Johnson was using Voss for a purpose surely unintended by its manufacturers. It has been claimed he asked assistants to then dispose of the containers. “On set, away from his trailer, if he needs to pee, he doesn’t go to the public bathroom,” an insider told The Wrap. “He pees in a Voss water bottle and his team or a PA has to dispose of it.”
If only the wee were the end of it. The anecdote about his Voss habit is only one of many unflattering stories about Johnson to have emerged — all in the context of his endlessly delayed, wildly over-budget Amazon MGM Christmas blockbuster Red One, in which he portrays — and yes, this is the actual plot — a special operations veteran trying to rescue a kidnapped Santa Claus.
Red One was slated for release late last year. But, amid a ballooning US$250 million ($419m) budget, it’s been delayed until November, with insiders blaming Johnson’s chronic lateness for the film going US$50m over budget and for making life difficult for everyone else on set.
According to the report in The Wrap, his co-workers are furious: “Dwayne truly doesn’t give a f***,” one insider said of the leading man’s alleged habit of showing up seven or eight hours late. Johnson’s representatives didn’t respond to The Wrap’s questions, although Amazon denied the allegations of lateness: “Dwayne Johnson and [producer] Seven Bucks have been incredible partners on Red One … a film that audiences of all ages are going to love this holiday season,” a statement read.
These reports would look bad for anyone. But they are particularly damaging to Johnson, who has long prided himself on his “nice guy” image — which extends to the stipulation that all his movies have happy endings (otherwise, he feels he is breaking his bargain with the audience). An action star patterned on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s old-school brawn, Johnson had long mused about following his predecessor into politics. Last year, he revealed “multiple parties” had approached him suggesting he seek high office — and said polls showed 46 per cent of Americans would vote for him as President.
He had already said he was open to running for the Oval Office. “I can’t deny that the thought of being governor, the thought of being President, is alluring,” he told GQ in 2016. Twelve months later, looking ahead to the 2024 election, he said putting his name on the ballot was a “realistic consideration”.
That may no longer be the case. Nor is his place on the A-list secure. Following his disastrous comic book movie Black Adam — where he tried to be a charismatic villain — and the Disney flop Jungle Cruise, he is no longer regarded as a sure thing at the box office. Then there is the drama over Red One, which flies in the face of Johnson’s frequent assertion that he is the “hardest worker in the room”. “The only thing Dwayne was consistent at was being chronically late,” a person involved in the production told The Wrap.
Johnson’s poor timekeeping is an open secret in Hollywood. He reportedly clashed with the usually amiable Ryan Reynolds on their Netflix action flick Red Notice after his co-star was frequently left waiting five or more hours for him to show up. On his monster movie Rampage, another cast member logged how late he was each morning. This year, the former WWE wrestling figurehead turned up three hours late at the WrestleMania event in Philadelphia — and was welcomed with a volley of jeers.
“You’re booing because The Rock was a little late, that’s why you’re booing?” Johnson said, attempting to pass his tardiness off as part of The Rock’s bad-boy persona. “[The Rock] was watching YouTube, watching [Eagles quarterback] Jalen Hurts lose in the play-offs again.”
These recent claims also shed new light on his much-publicised feud with Vin Diesel during the making of the Fast and the Furious movies. Johnson had famously dubbed Diesel a “candya**” on social media. At the time, the speculation was that he was fed up with Diesel constantly turning up late. But, according to those on set, both stars had poor punctuality — and out-of-control egos had fuelled the bad blood. (Diesel responded with a cryptic Instagram post promising to “tell everything”.)
The revelations could not come at a worse time for Johnson, who has been eager to latch on to a franchise and had seen his future as part of the DC Comics Universe. More than his future. The Wrap suggests he and his former personal assistant, Hiram Garcia, had essentially attempted a takeover of the DCU.
Garcia is the brother of Johnson’s ex-wife, Dany Garcia. Initially, his duties involved preparing John’s meals and acting as a gofer. However, in 2017, Johnson promoted him to president of his Seven Bucks production company. “Hiram went from making Dwayne’s protein shakes to running his company,” a source at Universal Pictures told The Wrap. “If Vince [from Entourage] tried to give Turtle a real job, Hiram Garcia is what you get as a result.”
Garcia was at Johnson’s side in 2022 when he met the recently installed head of the Warner Bros. Discovery mega-studio, David Zaslav. Garcia and Johnson had a range of suggestions, including the instantly notorious Henry Cavill Superman cameo in Black Adam that indicated (incorrectly) that Cavill was locked in to return as the Man of Steel. The movie star and his sidekick also let it be known they were open to taking over the DC Universe. Instead, Zaslav did the opposite bringing in James Gunn to run the DCU and breaking ties with Johnson.
Johnson has stuck by Garcia, a producer on Red One, where the budget is spiralling. “They brushed it away and said ‘We’re going to keep it under control’, which they didn’t,” is how one inside characterised the response of Amazon MGM to escalating overheads. “How are you going to keep this under control? You’re not. It’s just not how things work. You cannot make a movie where your above-the-line is more than half of the budget than what your actual production budget is.”
Johnson is already looking to the future. His next project is The Smashing Machine, a gritty wrestling biopic directed by shoestring filmmaker Benny Safdie and produced by A24, the acclaimed indie powerhouse. A24 is best known for existential chillers such as The Witch and Midsommar. But could the true horror story be the decision to work with Dwayne Johnson?
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