When Dwayne Johnson meets you (and I can assure you, he would love to), the first thing he will do is ask you six thousand questions about yourself, and remember the answers forever. If you are a child, good luck getting past Dwayne Johnson without a high five or some simulated roughhousing; if you're in a wheelchair, prepare for a Beowulf-style epic poem about your deeds and bravery, composed extemporaneously, delivered to Johnson's Instagram audience of 85 million people; if you're dead, having shuffled off your mortal coil before you even got the chance to meet Dwayne Johnson, that sucks—rest in peace knowing that Dwayne Johnson genuinely misses you. For Johnson, there are no strangers; there are simply best friends, and best friends he hasn't met yet. I've known the man for only two hours—and have been in his car now for only a few minutes, listening to the Dixie Chicks, headed to what he's luxuriously described to me as his “private gym”—and already it's apparent that I am Dwayne Johnson's greatest friend in the entire world.
One of the first things he'd needed to know about me was if I'd ever been to Australia. I haven't, I told him, and he beamed and shook his head. “You'd love it,” he declared. A puzzled pause hung in the air while I frantically tried to deduce what about my bearing projects that I would love Australia, and Johnson remembered that he didn't actually know anything about me (yet), except that I'd never been to Australia. Which made him want to learn everything. Among the many, many things Dwayne Johnson wondered: what high school I went to, if I'd ever been to the Oscars, how I chose my college, if I had “a big party” when I graduated from that college, what my sleep schedule is like, if I believe in ghosts, if I needed a ladder to access a tree house I visited one time, if my dad is black—wait, what?
How did Dwayne Johnson know?
“ 'Cause you look mixed and you said he listens to jazz,” he says. Johnson is a blisteringly active listener. He has, in the briefest of moments, displayed more earnest curiosity about me than anyone I've met in my entire life. (What is my favorite Christmas carol? I wondered after Dwayne Johnson asked me that, with only ten months left till Christmas.)
His solicitude, I realize, is also why he wanted to drive: Johnson's “private gym” is situated in one of the top ten worst locations I have ever been, including all grocery-store bathrooms. “This is why I didn't want Uber to just drop you off here,” he says as he pulls into a desolate parking lot. “Because this is a shitty neighborhood.”
What Dwayne Johnson calls “a shitty neighborhood” could more accurately be styled “a void of humanity right here in sunny California.” It's somewhere you could go to procure the bulk materials needed to construct a shitty neighborhood: DOORS, promises a sign on one empty building; SIGNS, another. Johnson parks his Escalade next to an abandoned Honda Prelude.
“Where are we?” I ask, unable to believe that my best friend has brought me here. “Warehouse district,” he announces proudly, unlocking an unmarked metal slab of a door. “Private gym.” He holds the slab open for me.
“I'm in the process of looking for a bigger space,” says Johnson, his voice bouncing off the cavernous walls of the biggest space I have ever seen.
“You need a bigger space, for sure,” I say. I squint to see if the gym ever ends, or if it simply follows the curve of the earth, its collection of machines with names ending in -ex stretching on to infinity. The lone window in the place is small and covered with a towel that Johnson—a man who last year reportedly made north of $60 million—has taped to the wall.
“I don't mind it being in the hood, but I do want to have a shower,” he says, explaining why he may move. “The warehouse district in the hood always works out nicely, because I can play music really loudly, and it's not in an office area where people will complain. But the biggest reason for this [seclusion] is that my gym time is really the only time I have an opportunity to be away from the public and by myself. So I get a lot of work done in here. Not only training. It becomes my meditation. Nobody bothers me here.” (Except me, right now. But I'm his best friend, so that's okay. He'd probably be fine if you stopped by, too.)
Though it's now just 1:30 P.M., this will be Johnson's second workout of the day. We are both clad in black leggings, but his cling to the muscles of his calves like nightfall descending over a mountain range, and mine look more like two toilet-paper tubes painted black. Over his, Johnson has layered a pair of roomy shorts for modesty and is sporting a UA X PROJECT ROCK tank top—a signature piece in his collection of Under Armour workout gear, which last year was one of the brand's best-selling lines, right alongside athletic gear endorsed by actual athletes like Steph Curry and Tom Brady. Johnson, of course, is not an athlete per se, but is something closer to generally athletic and professionally large.
At six feet four, Dwayne Johnson, while big, is not actually freakishly huge. It's his hands that translate him into something a shade more than human on-screen. They're enormous: tan and broad with flat, clean seashell pink nails. Each hand could comfortably lift an 8-year-old by the skull.
He guides me to a wall of a trillion neatly arranged dumbbells and tells me what I'm looking at. “You go from the ‘Caitys,’ ” he says, indicating the very smallest, “to the ‘DJs,’ which are 150 [pounds].”
I attempt to lift one of the DJs, which feels like trying to uproot a parking meter. Instead, Johnson places two 10-pound weights in my hands and picks up 20-pound weights for himself.
“You're only on 20s!” I say accusingly.
“Well, I'm going to warm up,” explains Johnson.
“Well,” I say, narrowing my eyes and nodding, “I'm warming up, too.”
Very quickly, the warm-up exercises get the best of me and I want to leave, except that my best friend has trapped me in an industrial park with nowhere to go.
“You,” says Johnson gravely, “need some water.”
We've been exercising for about three minutes.
“That's a vote of no confidence,” I tell him.
“I just want to make sure you're hydrated,” he says, picking up a cool, clear cylinder of Voss. He twists open the seal fast and hard, like he's wringing the neck of a punk who disrespected the troops (he loves the troops—we love the troops—proud to be an American, troops, troops, troops), and hands me the bottle.
Twelve thousand years later, everyone we ever loved has turned to dust, but we are finally finished with the freaking warm-up. Johnson guides me to an enormous contraption constructed of iron and nylon and foam. He grabs two triangular straps and demonstrates how I will (theoretically) use them to move weights.
“Oh no!” I gasp as soon as I start to pull the straps toward myself.
“You got it!” he says. “I got you!”
“Don't help me!” I wail, my arms trembling.
“I'm not,” he lies. “Great!” he also lies. “Need water?”
While I assist Johnson in getting rid of the water he is apparently sooooo desperate to dispose of, he increases the resistance to 85 pounds and takes my place at the machine. He pulls the straps to himself like he is performing a nylon ballet. The attached weights simply fly off the floor. His triceps are like captive wild horses that have finally been set free. Beyond that, the only indications that he is expending any effort come from his eyelids, which flutter slightly every time he wrenches the straps.
Stepping away from the cable machine, Johnson produces a booklet of handwritten notes. “Let me check on this,” he murmurs, head tipped toward his chest. “This is my workout handbook.” Johnson's penmanship is lovely—slender and elegant, with the faint forward slant prescribed by old-fashioned handwriting textbooks. His booklet is filled with permutations of exercise routines, which can work in concert to stabilize his shape or produce subtle or drastic changes as needed. It's a book rooted in practical optimism. It suggests that all body types are achievable to him—that hard work and enthusiasm will eventually generate the desired results.
Unfortunately, what the spidery letters tell Dwayne Johnson is that now we must lift weights with our necks.
“I don't think my neck needs to be stronger,” I say.
“It doesn't!” He smiles. We do it anyway.
Johnson's in Los Angeles now to film HBO's Ballers, but he's got gyms wherever he goes. He's building one at his farm in Virginia, where he keeps his horses (and also, he says, a piano once owned by Benjamin Franklin; it came with the farm), and he has a workout facility at his primary residence in Florida, where he lives on a compound on the edge of the Everglades, in a tiny rural town popular among professional athletes who yearn for country living within an hour's drive of Miami. As he crisscrosses the country for work, he's constantly scouting new spots. If he has to go to New York for a night, he will find a gym there, and it will be in a dank, subterranean room, probably off an alley that only Johnson can find. If you have a basement, he might be in your house right now, doing leg presses and staying hydrated. Found an incredible little out-of-the-way spot, he might write on Instagram, under a photo of himself lifting your washing machine. #HardestWorkersInTheRoom #ByAnyMeansNecessary #LateNight #StopNever.
For all the attention he's earned as a hulking action star, Johnson's best performances are in those funny roles where he can display flashes of vulnerability. Despite his toned physique, he has a Will Ferrell-esque ability to project childlike innocence and confusion with his large man body and bald baby face.
There's a scene in this spring's virilely campy Baywatch, for instance, in which Johnson's character is forced to wear normal work clothes instead of a tank top, even though he's the best lifeguard the race of man has ever seen. He doesn't have a line—all he's doing is standing while wearing a polo shirt—but it's inexplicably heartbreaking. Like watching a puppy get fired. And because it's absurd that it's heartbreaking—absurd that the millionaire movie star with the rippling muscles has tricked you into feeling bad for his character due to a minor dress-code issue—it's also weirdly funny.
In an age when it's cooler to hate things than enjoy them, Johnson has carved out an improbable niche for himself, as someone it's safe to like. Maybe you like him because he's big and does fast things in slow motion. Maybe you like him because he had one song to sing in the children's musical he was cast in, and he sang it with his whole heart. Undeniably, he is likable—and likable is lucrative in his line of work: His films have collectively taken in more than a billion dollars a year worldwide, a fact that has made Johnson, at 45 years old, the highest-paid movie star on earth. This popularity has made people wonder just how far it could take him and what, exactly, he'd like to do with it. In a moment of political ridiculousness, there's even the suddenly not ridiculous question of whether Dwayne Johnson might actually be headed for Washington.
Last June, when The Washington Post published an op-ed suggesting he could be a viable candidate, Johnson posted a screen grab and gave the idea a boost. On Instagram, he called the Post piece “interesting” and “fun to read,” adding that “the most important thing right now is strong honest leadership from our current and future leaders of this country.”
Since then, Johnson tells me, he's given the question more thought. “A year ago,” he says, “it started coming up more and more. There was a real sense of earnestness, which made me go home and think, ‘Let me really rethink my answer and make sure I am giving an answer that is truthful and also respectful.’ I didn't want to be flippant—‘We'll have three days off for a weekend! No taxes!’”
So, after all that consideration, Johnson doesn't hesitate when I ask him whether he honestly might one day give up his life as the highest-paid movie star on earth—which is unquestionably easier, more fun, and more lucrative than being president of the United States—in order to run for office. “I think that it's a real possibility,” he says solemnly.
When you think about the distance Johnson has already traveled, the idea doesn't sound crazy. So far, Johnson's tale of success has been your classic rags-to-stretch-fabrics-to-riches story. He was born in California, the only child of Rocky Johnson, a pioneering black Nova Scotian wrestler who performed in a tag-team duo called the Soul Patrol, and Ata Maivia, who has ties, through her father, to the Anoa'i family—a legendary clan of Samoan wrestlers. Despite the legacy, Johnson grew up poor; he speaks of his family's eviction from a one-room apartment as the formative experience of his adolescence. He racked up numerous arrests for fighting and petty theft while still a minor. In high school, he found football, which helped him find college.
“We had no money, and my grades were just average,” he says, “so it wasn't like I was getting [an academic] scholarship. The University of Miami was the top program in the country. They were the national champions. I just wanted to go where I could compete.”
After a string of injuries—Johnson was usurped at Miami by future NFL Hall of Famer Warren Sapp—he decided to try wrestling. Before long, his popularity as a charismatic showman earned him the sort of opportunity every large man dreams of: the chance to play a slickly baby-oiled Akkadian Scorpion King opposite Brendan Fraser. (It was a bigger deal back then, in 2001.)
In the promotional material for The Mummy Returns, Johnson—resplendent in a long jet-black wig and dazzling gold bracelets—was featured prominently, even though he appeared in the actual movie for only about ten minutes. Audiences loved those minutes. Universal Studios immediately gave him his own prequel to headline, The Scorpion King.
How does an untrained actor jump from a cameo to a starring role in the span of a year, while never even quitting his day job? Then, as now, Johnson tested well in what the film industry refers to as “all four quadrants”: old men, young men, old women, and young women. “[He] is as close to guaranteeing you butts in the seat as anybody can be,” NBCUniversal vice chairman Ron Meyer told me.
Broadly, the quadrants thing means that everyone likes him. Specifically, it suggests that if Johnson's personal magnetism were any stronger, birds in his vicinity might plummet from the sky, their internal navigation mechanisms thrown off by the force of his personality. Indeed, Beau Flynn, a producer who has collaborated with Johnson on several films, including Baywatch, tells me Johnson's charisma sometimes has to be subdued on-screen—lest it risk neutralizing the drama.
“His smile is like a weapon,” Flynn says, bringing up, by way of example, a scene in San Andreas in which Johnson plays an air-rescue pilot re-united with his daughter as earthquakes lay waste to San Francisco.
“When he sees her for the first time, it was critical to see that smile and feel that sense of relief,” says Flynn. But the filmmakers had to tread lightly: The reunion wasn't the climax of the movie—Johnson's character still needed to save the girl from a collapsing building one more time. “You have to be smart,” Flynn says, “because if [the smile] is too much, the audience will feel safe. They'll feel the movie is over.”
Plenty of actors are charming, though. When it comes to his immense global popularity, Johnson has other unique factors working in his favor, too: like his tough-to-place ethnicity. His own racial blend (black and Samoan) means he is blessed with skin the color of graham crackers, a perfectly roasted marshmallow, and Abraham Lincoln on the penny. It's a rare combination. In the last census, the number of Americans identifying as “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander” (a blanket term that includes people who trace their lineage to Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, and lots of other small, warm islands) plus “Black or African American” was just 50,308. A figure so low it rounds out to 0.0 percent of the total U.S. population, though a more gracious person might say “less than 0.1 percent.” In other words, if you meet a 45-year-old half-black, half-Samoan man living in the United States, the odds are shockingly high he will be Dwayne Johnson. This uncommon ethnic background means that, in the right light, he can read as Pacific Islander, Latino, Middle Eastern, Native American, Southeast Asian, undead Scorpion King from an ancient civilization, black, white, or any combo thereof. (Johnson says white people often guess he is “…Greek?”) In other words, pretty much anyone can find themselves, or a slightly tanner or paler version of themselves, in Dwayne Johnson if they look hard enough; appearance-wise, he has a hometown advantage everywhere on earth.
Rolling toward the parking lot of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, Johnson's driver pulls his Escalade to a stop. It's the afternoon before the Oscars, where Johnson will make a brief appearance, introducing a song from Moana, and he's here now for a quick run-through. (Johnson's song from the Moana soundtrack, “You're Welcome,” was not nominated for any awards, but he sings it under his breath all day anyway, just because he really loves that song.) A production assistant with a clipboard leans in, asking the driver whom he's got to check in.
“Denzel!” yells Johnson, with perfect deadpan delivery, from the backseat. It gets a laugh from his driver, but it's a baffling idea. Because, if you have to be someone, there's really no one better to be than Dwayne Johnson.
Backstage, surrounded by velvet furniture and pristine, untouched bagels, is the actress Scarlett Johansson. She and Johnson greet each other for no reason other than they are the two celebrities in a room full of otherwise unexceptional people, and Johnson immediately starts asking her about her whole life. (“Well,” she says, “I was born and raised in Manhattan, so…”) Johansson is one of the only people Johnson will encounter here who does not impress upon him the dramatic positive effect his recent Spike tribute program, Rock the Troops, had on their soul. Turns out many of the people working behind the scenes at the Oscars also served as crew members on the special, which was inspired by Bob Hope's USO shows and featured tons of tear-inducing surprises and reunions, as well as the music of Nick Jonas. One man is even wearing a Rock the Troops jacket.
The mammoth event, filmed in Hawaii in front of 50,000 service members and their families, came together pretty easily, from Johnson's point of view, right after the president of Spike asked him, “What's close to your heart?”
“I said, ‘Well, what if we did something for the troops?’…and then, really, it was like”—Johnson snaps his fingers—“that.”
Johnson frequently takes to social media to thank members of the armed forces, specifically and in aggregate, for their service. In his patriotic hands, anything can—and will—become a tribute to the armed forces. In March, he was “grateful” to share the “big news” on Instagram that he would be portraying “a disabled US War Vet and former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader” in an upcoming movie about “the world's largest skyscraper—that's on fire.” Johnson wrote that his character in this demented summer blockbuster was “inspired by the thousands of disabled US veterans and war heroes I've had the honor of shaking hands with over the years.” (He also mentioned that he got to meet with “the world's top skyscraper architects,” which, though it was not about the military, was a very cool thing to brag about and could easily serve as the basis for a separate preposterous film.)
Johnson's industrial-strength patriotism is a big reason people wonder about his political aspirations. Last year, both presidential campaigns reached out to him for his endorsement, he says. “Which I did not give. I felt like…and give me a second, because I've never said this publicly, so…” He stops to gather his thoughts. He's sitting now in a cabana on the set of Ballers while crew members wheel around towering lights. “I feel like I'm in a position now where my word carries a lot of weight and influence, which of course is why they want the endorsement. But I also have a tremendous amount of respect for the process and felt like if I did share my political views publicly, a few things would happen—and these are all conversations I have with myself, in the gym at four o'clock in the morning—I felt like it would either (a) make people unhappy with the thought of whatever my political view was. And, also, it might sway an opinion, which I didn't want to do.” He says he told both the Trump and Clinton camps that he wasn't making an endorsement, that he preferred to see Americans make up their own minds.
As for what Johnson believes, well, he's remained cagey. People searching for evidence of party loyalty point out that he spoke at the 2000 Republican convention, which is true; but he also attended the Democratic convention that same year, encouraging audiences at both events to vote. These days, he tells me, he's registered as an independent.
“How do you think Donald Trump is doing?” I ask.
“Mmm… With any job you come into, you've got to prove yourself. And…” Johnson pauses, performing lightning-fast mental calibrations. “Personally, I feel that if I were president, poise would be important. Leadership would be important. Taking responsibility for everybody. [If I didn't agree with someone] on something, I wouldn't shut them out. I would actually include them. The first thing we'd do is we'd come and sit down and we'd talk about it. It's hard to categorize right now how I think he's doing, other than to tell you how I would operate, what I would like to see.”
“What would you like to see?”
“Right?” Johnson says, laughing. He's obviously a little nervous, plucking at the spandex material stretching across his massive thighs, but he doesn't attempt to end the line of questioning. “I'd like to see a better leadership. I'd like to see a greater leadership. When there's a disagreement, and you have a large group of people that you're in a disagreement with—for example, the media—I feel like it informs me that I could be better. We all have issues, and we all gotta work our shit out. And I feel like one of the qualities of a great leader is not shutting people out. I miss that part. Even if we disagree, we've got to figure it out. Because otherwise I feel, as an American, all I hear and all I see in the example you're setting is ‘Now I'm shutting you out. And you can't come.’ [Disagreement] informs us. The responsibility as president—I [would] take responsibility for everyone. Especially when you disagree with me. If there's a large number of people disagreeing, there might be something I'm not seeing, so let me see it. Let me understand it.”
It's a diplomatic answer. Few people would argue with the value of great leadership. To date, Johnson's embryonic political platform has largely consisted of similar neutral statements, and a robust love for the troops. I want to get more specific.
“What are your thoughts on the Muslim ban?”
“I completely disagree with it,” he says without hesitation. “I believe in our national security to the core, but I don't believe in a ‘ban’ that bans immigrants. I believe in inclusion. Our country was built on that, and it continues to be made strong by that. And the decision felt like a snap judgment. I feel like the majority of, if not all, Americans feel that protection is of huge importance. But the ideology and the execution [of national-security initiatives] is where we really have to be careful of not making those snap decisions, because there's a tail effect... Within 24 hours, we saw a ‘tail effect.’ It grew to heartache, it grew to a great deal of pain, it grew to a great deal of confusion, and it had a lot of people scrambling.”
Could Johnson do better? Could he really run for president? Barring the adoption of policy points that are completely unhinged (like spending $8 billion to build a colony in the earth's core—though, if anyone could do that, it would be Dwayne Johnson), there's much to suggest Johnson could chart a fast and furious ride to the White House. He's a quick study with boundless attention to detail. Beyond his popularity—and the fact that his head often looks like a big, round smiley face—he's got a politician's warm, deep voice, which projects authority, capability, and strength. And he possesses a startling steel-trap memory. Johnson simply remembers everything about people: biographical details, offhand anecdotes, entire conversations. It's the quality that allows him to treat everyone like a close friend, the silent secret to his supercharged charm.
Johnson describes himself as a “feminist” raised by “strong women.” He's spoken openly about his experiences with depression and has positioned himself as a mental-health advocate. His popularity as a professional wrestler gives him a strong heartland base, and the fact that he grew up all over the United States—while his dad worked the wrestling circuit—gives him local ties, literally, from coast to coast (Connecticut, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, California, Washington, and Hawaii). In person, he projects an aura of unshakable calm (a trait he's used in Hollywood to play all manner of high-stakes lifesavers, from fire-department rescue pilot to Green Beret to lifeguard during a riptide). With his jacked body and love of horses, Johnson could be the only candidate with a chance of earning the respect of Vladimir Putin in the virility department. He's equally capable of killing a terrorist with a chair shot or with kindness.
The cold, hard truth is that if Donald Trump can be elected president, Dwayne Johnson can be elected president. Easily. He probably has better odds of winning an election than Trump, and Trump did win, so what does that tell you? If anything, Trump's election proved that celebrities can just dive right in—they don't even have to make a pit stop as governor of California before the presidency.
“If [becoming the president] is something he focused on,” says Ron Meyer, the NBCUniversal vice chairman, “he probably would accomplish it. I think there's nothing that he couldn't do.”
Meyer's statement, which catches me off guard, doesn't just reflect a confidence in Johnson—it says something about the American people. And it comes from a guy whose job depends on predicting the behavior and desires of the American people, to the tune of several billion dollars a year. I ask Meyer if he would vote for Johnson on a presidential ballot, expecting him to demur—to argue that the question is too premature to even consider.
“Oh, I would vote for him without a question,” he says.
“A trillion percent,” says Beau Flynn, the producer, when posed with the same question. He is even more optimistic about Johnson's chances for victory. “One hundred percent, he would win, I have no doubt. His level of commitment and his care for people would translate immediately. If he looked me in the eyes and said, ‘I want to build a campaign. I want to run for the president of the United States,’ done, and you can lock it.”
Flynn also says something weird and grand and beautiful about Dwayne Johnson: “He loves the world.”
So much so that one could imagine Johnson's toughest challenge might be toning down some of his enthusiasm—like he dials back his smile on-screen—in order to deal with, say, the more covert aspects of the presidency. He's a guy who treats every single bit of news like a surprise party for you, and he's desperate to be the one to yell “Surprise!” In fact, he already has a record of revealing state secrets, as when he tweeted in May of 2011: “Just got word that will shock the world—Land of the free...home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!”
He was referring to the death of Osama bin Laden. Except that his announcement beat President Obama's by about an hour.
To this day, Johnson refuses to disclose how he got wind of this ultra-classified mission. “The tweet was actually supposed to come out at the same time the president was making his speech,” he says, “but the moment I sent that out, I got word that now we've delayed the speech a little bit. I was like, ‘Ooooh. Okay.’ ”
“That's the way love goes,” says Johnson on the Ballers set, shrugging at the national-security faux pas. He has the grace to look a little abashed. “I was really excited that day.”
Of course, Johnson is really excited every day. He wants us all to feel the same way—to look for life's joys here and there, to get amped. And not just over the clandestine raids that take out terrorist masterminds in Pakistan. There are simple thrills everywhere.
Weeks after I first met Johnson, I wake up to a direct message on Twitter. @TheRock is on the road and just wanted to alert me to the fact that his hotel carries GQ. The message is decorated with fist-bump and hang-loose emojis.
“Hope you're great and sleeping soundly!!” he writes.
The wild thing is, I believe he means it literally. If anyone hopes his fellow man is great and sleeping soundly!! it's Dwayne Johnson. And if he can convince a few million more people of that, everyone's best friend is going to be president.
Caity Weaver is a GQ writer and editor. Previously, she has profiled Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian, and visited Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.
This story originally appeared in the June 2017 issue with the title “Vote The Rock.”
