John Cena isn’t pretending his first run in Hollywood was better than it actually was.
Speaking with Conan O’Brien, Cena reflected on his rocky transition from WWE into acting, after Conan brought up how his first film flopped commercially and the projects that followed didn’t turn things around right away.
Cena acknowledged plenty of factors outside his control played a role, but when it came to what he actually could control, he put the blame squarely on himself: he simply wasn’t wholeheartedly invested, because all he really wanted was to be back in the ring.
What can I control and what can I learn from my experiences? The reason those movies—or the reason I can control that those movies sucked—I wasn’t wholeheartedly invested. I wanted to be in the ring.
He explained the disconnect in practical terms. At 27 years old, spending 15 hours a day standing around a quiet, controlled film set couldn’t compete with performing in front of a roaring arena crowd and then hitting the road to do it all again the next night. His focus, by his own admission, was simply elsewhere.
Because as a 27-year-old, spending 15 hours a day to watch one thing blow up in a library-quiet set is not near as cool as being in an arena in Lexington with 22,000 people going apes*** to be like, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’ and then you drive to the next town and do it again. Like, I wanted to be there. My focus was elsewhere.
Things changed by the time he auditioned for “Trainwreck.” Cena said he approached that opportunity with a completely different mindset, recognizing he’d already been effectively run out of the movie business once and had other things going for him regardless of the outcome.
By the time I auditioned for Trainwreck, I was like, ‘Hey, you’ve already been run out of the movie business once and you’re also doing okay. You have other things going on.’
That shift in perspective changed how he carried himself in the room. Rather than worrying about protecting the tough-guy image fans knew him for, Cena said he leaned fully into being the butt of the joke if that’s what made a scene work, refusing to let his own ego get in the way of making something funny and good.
That’s exactly what I did in that audition. I’m sitting with very funny people. I have no business being there. But I didn’t give a fuck and just let it go and realize that, like, I was the joke in many cases. So, I didn’t put the roadblock in front of myself like, ‘I can’t laugh at myself because I’m cool,’ and that. Like, let’s go. Let’s make the funniest, coolest thing.
Cena isn’t rewriting his own history now that he’s found real success as an actor. His early films didn’t land, and by his own account, a big reason was straightforward: he wasn’t giving Hollywood the same commitment he’d always given WWE.
