Talk about a tempest in a teapot, or some kind of pot anyway. In a GQ cover story, Dwayne Johnson addresses claims made in a report from The Wrap that he was often late to set during filming of the new holiday movie Red One and that he sometimes used water bottles as, well, makeshift urinals.
“Yeah,” Johnson told GQ about peeing in water bottles to save time. “That happens…I’ve said a thousand times: ‘Hey, I’m here. Come and ask me. And I’ll tell you the truth.’”
On a more serious note, The Wrap report suggested that Johnson’s frequent tardiness to set – sometimes as much as eight hours – had driven the Red One budget up by a big $250 million.
“Yeah, that happens too,” Johnson says. “But not that amount, by the way. That was a bananas amount. That’s crazy. Ridiculous.” Johnson called the controversy “bullshit.”
In the GQ piece, Red One director Jake Kasdan defends Johnson. “[Dwayne] never missed a day of work ever,” Kasdan says. “He has a lot going on. He can be late sometimes, but such is Hollywood — that’s the case with everybody. Honestly, I’ve made three big movies with him. I’ve never seen him be anything but great to every single person on the set.”
Costar Chris Evans also comes to Johnson’s defense. “In terms of the guy that I saw, compared to some of the things I’ve seen on other movies with other actors who are not only not conscious of other people’s time and efforts, but they’re unpredictable? I found Dwayne to be — we all know exactly what he’s going to do when he’s going to do it.”
Johnson, Evans says, typically works out in the mornings before arriving on set. “But this is something that the producers, the director, and it’s all his team, so they all know this. So it’s all basic. It’s not like he’s late unexpectedly, and I wouldn’t even call it late. He comes in slightly later on certain mornings, but it’s part of the plan. It’s worked into the schedules and everyone knows it, so he shows up when he’s scheduled to show up.”
Evans also shares a story suggesting a more considerate side of Johnson. As is the case on some movie sets, Red One had a cast and crew raffle called Five-Dollar Fridays with everyone pitching in – but actors generally not in the running to collect. “The pot was up to four or five grand or something,” Evans recalled, “and before they pulled the name out, Dwayne said, ‘What’s the pot at right now?’ And someone said, ‘I don’t know, four grand.’ And he said, ‘Let’s call it 20.’” Then, says Evans, Johnson said, “You know what? Should we do it again? How about 30 this time?’ Everyone goes nuts. And then he says, ‘You know what? How about one more?’ And it was 50. I think on one Friday, Dwayne gave away something like close to a hundred thousand dollars.”
