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There are probably many benefits to starring in a movie with Dwayne Johnson. Obviously, the first is that you get to have Johnson as your co-star. But another plus is that you might pick up some excellent workout tips. Just ask his co-star Jack Whitehall, who had a chance to see Iron Paradise in all its glory while filming Jungle Cruise. The actor opened up about what it was like to work out with The Rock and admitted that, all things considered, they didn’t actually hit the gym all that much.
It goes without saying that Dwayne Johnson is unwaveringly committed to his fitness. The actor even shared regular updates from his personal gym all through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. He makes sure he has a set-up everywhere he goes, so he can keep working out even when he’s working. So, of course, he brought Iron Paradise with him when he was filming Jungle Cruise -- even if it meant a slightly altered workout routine, as his co-star Jack Whitehall told Comicbook.com:
Yeah, I mean his Iron Paradise is really stunning to behold it. It’s quite impressive. I’ve never seen a gym quite like it. You know, obviously Dwayne has to have a gym with him, because I think for a lot of roles he needs to kind of build up his body. As he alludes to, he is the hardest worker in the room. He’s the guy that really puts in the hours at the gym. For this role, he slightly covered up his muscles because he wanted to feel like he was a legitimate character from 1913 and so he was in the gym slightly less, which still meant three hours a day.
Three hours a day in the gym is still three hours more than many of us spend, so that may not seem like a big change. Still, it sounds like both Dwayne Johnson, who plays the pun-ny skipper Frank Wolff and Jack Whitehall, who plays Dr. Lily Houghton’s (Emily Blunt) brother MacGregor, were very mindful of how they needed to appear in order for Jungle Cruise to be believable
For me, again this was a movie where I wanted to feel like I was in a period film, so I had to lose quite a lot of the muscle density that I normally have. When they first came to me for the role, I was like at my full capacity. I’m naturally like an absolute unit so I had to shift my focus to do a lot of cardio. I had to hit the quinoa really hard. It was a real struggle to get down to my screen weight that you see in the finished product. I had to wear quite a lot of lapels with the suit. You know those neck muscles? I just had those at the end; those are quite hard to shift.
Despite scaling back to play Frank, Dwayne Johnson has been hitting Iron Paradise especially hard as he prepares for Black Adam, which will premiere on July 29, 2022. And while you wait for the DC Comics epic to hit cinemas, you can check out Jungle Cruise, which is currently playing in theaters and streaming on Disney+, which you can sign up for using this link.
