Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is talking out concerning the final time he talked to his late father, Rocky Johnson, with whom he had a deeply difficult relationship.
The 53-year-old actor mentioned they fought over his father’s memoir. Johnson mentioned Rocky’s guide contained quotes, ostensibly written by him, that gave his dad credit score for his success.
“It hurts,” he advised The New York Instances Journal in an in-depth interview printed Sunday.
Johnson’s father, a former professional wrestler himself, had simply printed “Soulman: The Rocky Johnson Story,” on the time, and Johnson mentioned he was shocked to learn that he had written the foreword for the guide — regardless that he hadn’t.
“It simply fully crossed the road,” Johnson mentioned. “It goes again to the eye, the narcissism.”
Fox Information Digital reached out to Johnson for added remark.
In truth, Johnson mentioned their 2019 blowup was the largest struggle he’d had together with his father since 25 years earlier, when he determined he needed to observe in his dad’s professional wrestling footsteps.
Rocky Johnson advised his son on the time: “What do you assume you probably have to supply?”
Johnson’s household moved usually when he was a child, and his dad, regularly on the highway as a wrestler, usually didn’t have time for him.
His mother and father’ relationship was additionally risky to the purpose the place they generally lived aside.
Johnson mentioned that was type of a reduction from the combating.
He additionally attributed probably the most painful second in his life to his father.
When he was 15, he mentioned he and his mom have been evicted from their residence in Hawaii. His mother requested his dad to let Dwayne stick with him in Tennessee, the place he was dwelling on the time, so she may settle issues in Hawaii, then drive out and be a part of the 2 of them.
“It damage my coronary heart,” Johnson mentioned of seeing his mother’s response to the eviction discover left on their door. However he mentioned his father advised her, “No downside, I’ve received an residence.”
Nevertheless, when Johnson arrived in Nashville, his father was nowhere to be discovered. As an alternative, he was greeted by a person named Bob, who drove him to a motel, launched him to a different man named Bruno — whom, by the way, Johnson remains to be pals with — and advised him he’d be dwelling there.
The “Quick & Livid Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” actor mentioned he realized immediately that his dad was dwelling with one other lady, and when his mom arrived after driving from San Francisco in a Ford Thunderbird bought by her husband, she discovered, too.
“My coronary heart hurts after I take into consideration that,” Johnson mentioned. “The ache that my mother was driving with: Like ‘What’s my life now? That entire time?’”
When she arrived on the motel, and was met by Bruno and Rocky, who started speaking in circles, she knew.
“That was it. Inside 5 minutes all of it simply …. It wasn’t even an explosion. It was only a — collapse,” Johnson defined.
He mentioned he realized to consider himself as the principle man in his mom’s life, and he was the one who pulled her again from attainable tragedy when she walked straight into freeway site visitors after that drive to Nashville.
The look on her face, he mentioned, nonetheless haunts him. She was gone.
The remainder of his father’s 2019 memoir, Johnson mentioned, was stuffed with fiction.
“Rising up with my dad, I do know the reality to all these tales, they usually’re not on this guide. If the reality is blue, the story is pink,” he defined.
Ultimately, Johnson received it pulled from bookstore cabinets.
Johnson realized his father had died as he was driving to set on the primary day of filming “Purple Discover” in 2020.
He thought at first possibly he ought to go residence and be together with his household, however then he remembered one in every of his father’s many mantras that, it doesn’t matter what, the “present should go on.”
So he went to work.
It was at his dad’s funeral that he mentioned he realized his dad had been an awesome pal to so many others, together with wrestlers like Hulk Hogan and Triple H.
“Wildly sufficient, my previous man was simply this superb pal,” he mentioned. “Difficult husband. Difficult dad. However an superior pal to everybody else.”
Requested if he thought he was extra his father’s pal than his son, Johnson mentioned no.
“He wasn’t my pal both,” he answered. “I want. I feel that my mother was my pal.”
Johnson now has three kids of his personal: daughters, Simone, 24; Jasmine, 9; and Tiana, 7.
