The next few months will be pretty eventful for John Cena on the 2023 new movie releases front, for a couple reasons in particular. This weekend, moviegoers will see him reprise Jakob Toretto in Fast X, just two years after he made his Fast & Furious debut in F9. Then in late July, Barbie will follow, which will see him playing a merman of all roles. Now the WWE star has revealed the “accidental” way he was looped into Barbie’s cast of all-star talent.
Although he wasn’t shown in the Barbie trailer released in April, our own Riley Utley was pleased to see Cena’s name shown towards the end of the preview, so now we just have to wait and see how his merman character factors into the story. In the meantime, while stopping by TODAY to talk about his work on Fast X, Cena went over how just inadvertently crossing paths with Robbie in everyday life led to him being cast in the Barbie movie:
Honestly, it was a happy accident. I think Barbie and Fast X share a lot of parallels. The cast list is amazing, the Barbie cast is amazing, the Fast X cast is amazing. So with a lot of opportunity, it was a chance for maybe to, ’Hey, would you guys be willing to have me?’… In an accidental run-in with Margot Robbie, I said, 'I will pretty much do whatever you guys need because I really enjoy the movie.' And they asked me if I wanted to be a merman. And I said, 'Yeah, sure.'
Fast X and Barbie do indeed boast impressive lineups of actors, with some of John Cena’s other costars in the latter including Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Will Ferrell, Michael Cera and Rhea Perlman. However, rather than being cast through official channels, it was that chance encounter and Cena shooting his shot that led to him being included in the movie. He continued:
I haven't worked with Margot before. We literally randomly ran into each other as friends. Fast X was filming across the street from Barbie. And they said, 'Why don't you do Barbie?' I said, 'I've been trying.' Margot makes a lot of the decisions for that, and I said, 'Well, I'll do whatever you need.'
It’s important to mention that John Cena and Margot Robbie did both appear in 2021’s The Suicide Squad, but Peacemaker and Harley Quinn didn’t really share much screen time. So Barbie was the first true opportunity for the two of them to work together in a major way, and since Robbie produced it in addition to playing the main version of the title character, she had the pull to bring him aboard. It probably helped that even before these two met each other, Robbie has an interesting tie to Cena, having slept next to a cardboard cutout of him for years.
In addition to Fast X and Barbie, we’ll also hear John Cena as the voice of Rocksteady in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which is due out in August. After that, he’ll be seen in Coyote Vs. Acme as the ACME Coporation’s CEO, and that movie expected to come out in 2023 too despite not yet having having a release date. But there’s no arguing that Fast X and Barbie make one hell of a summer movie season one-two punch, and while the former will obviously be spotlighting his talents in the action realm more, the latter is another chance for him to show off his comedic sensibilities.
Barbie opens in theaters on July 21, the same day as Oppenheimer, yet another movie with a stacked cast. If you’d like to check out some of John Cena’s more recent work, HBO Max subscribers can stream F9, The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker Season 1, or break out your Hulu subscription to watch him in Vacation Friends.
