In recent years, John Cena has effectively joined the ranks of great deadpan comedians such as Aubrey Plaza, Kristen Wiig and Steve Carell with his roles in Trainwreck, The Suicide Squad and this weekend’s release, Vacation Friends. The actor has really come into his style of humor in the past few years, and he’s speaking to how it has become a defining part of his Hollywood career.
CinemaBlend spoke with John Cena ahead of the Hulu release of Vacation Friends, which has the actor playing one half of a wacky couple Lil Rel Howery and Yvonne Orji’s straight-laced couple become entwined with. Cena shared how deadpan delivery became part of what we can come to expect from the actor:
I think just believing in what you’re doing. I don’t know why if you’re supposed to be a certain character why you would lack conviction in a lot of your stuff and I think a lot of that stems from me being able to be a character in WWE. You can’t ever waver, you have to have conviction in everything that you do and I think that’s helped me in getting into different roles on film.
As John Cena told us, it all goes back to his many years in the WWE. Cena debuted in World Wrestling Entertainment in 2000 when he was 23 years old under the name “The Prototype” before becoming a mainstay in the franchise. Throughout the years, he committed to a number of storylines in the ring that would go on to influence his current work in comedy films.
As we know from other popular actors with roots in the WWE, like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Dave Bautista, as it turns out, being in the WWE makes for some stellar training in acting, especially to work with some incredible fellow comedic actors. Like John Cena mentioned, it just makes sense for his characters to believe what they are saying, so why not show this lack of emotion or wavering while saying lines that we as an audience crack up over?
John Cena works closely with Search Party’s Meredith Hagner in Vacation Friends, who play a wild couple Howery and Orji's characters end up hanging out with during their tropical vacation, offering them cocaine-rimmed margaritas and suspiciously expensive excavations. When Howery's Marcus and Orji’s Emily leave to go back home, they fully expect them to stay their “vacation friends” and not enter their actual lives, until Cena's Ron and Hagner’s Kyla invite themselves to their fancy wedding.
You can see John Cena in Vacation Friends, which arrives exclusively on Hulu on August 27. And check out what else is new to Hulu this month, such as more American Horror Story and the Selena Gomez and Steve Martin-led show Only Murders in the Building here on CinemaBlend.
