Here’s What Happened When Emily Blunt ‘Ghosted’ The Rock
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson wasn’t sure if Emily Blunt was interested in co-starring with him in Disney’s Jungle Cruise movie. So he did what any self-respecting actor would do: he made a video message for her. Here’s what happened when Blunt received the message.
Johnson sent Blunt a video message that he created at 4:00 AM
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Johnson and Blunt, now fast friends, talked about how they’d come together to head the cast of Jungle Cruise. For his part, Johnson claimed to have made the video while shooting Skyscraper. Already attached to the ride-based Disney project, he was convinced that the only woman worthy of playing opposite him was Emily Blunt.
“I must have shot it about five or six times because I had not communicated with Emily yet,” Johnson explained. “I had not even met her. And I wanted to let her know via this video just how important she was to this movie and how I only wanted her in this movie. And it was great. And I … I actually never heard again from Emily. Didn’t respond at all. Just ghosted me.”
Blunt liked the gesture, relayed to her through the movie’s director Jaume Collet-Serra.
“I thought the video was sweet,” she said. “Didn’t know you were going to be so sensitive.”
It worked. Blunt took the role of Dr. Lily Houghton opposite Johnson’s captain Frank Wolff. The movie premiered yesterday at Disneyland, and the two appeared side-by-side on the arrivals carpet, twinning in white outfits.
Blunt said they approached the movie “sensitively”
Disney’s rides have been criticized in recent years for having culturally inappropriate elements; Even since the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, attitudes have changed, so Blunt noted that it’s crucial to preserve nostalgia and protect modern sensibilities.
“You’re trying to represent the spirit of the ride that is pierced into people’s nostalgic memory,” Blunt told The Hollywood Reporter. “But you want to do it sensitively. You want to make sure that everyone feels seen and heard in a way that’s really respectful.”
Blunt said Johnson is actually ‘shy’
Despite unintentionally ignoring Johnson’s carefully produced video, the actor had nothing but good things to say about Blunt. “Not only is she a huge movie star but, more importantly, really the most empathetic human being I’ve ever met,” Johnson said. According to The Hollywood Reporter, after initially laughing off his comments, Blunt promptly returned the sentiment.
“When you get to know him as being much gentler, much more shy than people realize, you really realize that The Rock is the performance of a lifetime,” she said. “It is so the antithesis of who he is. And so I’m going to push him to play, to take big swings with characters. Because it’s really transformative if you know him as I do and then you see him be The Rock — you’re like, ‘Who is that?’ “
On the July 24th carpet of the Jungle Cruise premiere, Johnson and Blunt joked with Variety about how Johnson wound up getting what he wanted in the end. “You know how it is,” Blunt told Variety in an interview clip posted to Twitter. “You gotta play hard to get. And then they really want you for the part. And then you get everything you need.”
