On the red carpet of Monday’s Los Angeles premiere, Johnson explained to Deadline that he thought there was “something unique” in the story of Kerr’s life, which writer/director Benny Safdie and co-star Emily Blunt also saw before joining the A24 project.
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“Fighting just happened to be what he did, and he was awesome at it,” said Johnson at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. “But it’s not a fight movie, it’s a life movie.”
Set in the late ’90s, The Smashing Machine follows Kerr (Johnson) during his swift rise as the undefeated MMA rookie, whose streak ended abruptly in 2000, sparking an addiction to painkillers and two overdoses, before mounting a comeback years later.
“Mark Kerr’s life represents so much of everyone around the world, but not ‘oh, he’s the greatest fighter on the planet,’ but more so ‘oh, he struggled with pressure and how to deal with pressure,'” Johnson explained. “And he struggled with pain, and he struggled with how to deal with addiction. And he got hit hard. At one point, he was the greatest fighter on the planet, and then he lost. And he had a hard time reconciling with that loss.
“And he overdosed twice; he’s lucky to be alive, and I’m so happy that he is alive. Because as you know, films like this where they’re a bio film, a lot of times, the main subject isn’t alive, he’s not around, or she’s not around. So, I’m so thankful that he is,” he added.
Blunt felt just as grateful, having the real Dawn Staples-Kerr to draw inspiration for her portrayal of the fighter’s then girlfriend, with whom he was later married and shared a son. The actress jokingly noted she was “obsessed with watching” Staples-Kerr and would “drive to work, watching videos of her like a stalker.”
“I had never had that opportunity to play someone who’s with us,” she said. “You know, I’ve played people who are not with us anymore, so to get to talk to her, absorb her, hear the entirety of her life story, from her childhood — and god bless her, she was so indulgent of my incredibly intrusive questions.”
Blunt added, “And I’ve never had that, so I had such a veracious appetite for trying to absorb as much as possible of her. She was open and trusting, and I respect that, because I would be very nervous to have someone play a moment in my life. I would be scared. So, I think it was just new for me, and I wish I could have it every time.”
Safdie, who began developing the script with Johnson in 2023, explained what attracted him to the MMA fighter’s story, which was also told in the 2002 HBO documentary of the same name.
“Mark is a unique person, in that he can go in the ring and beat the crap out of somebody, and in his words, ‘take their will away from them,'” he explained. “But he can come out and then wax poetic about why he did it. And he could talk about his feelings and emotions in a way that’s really almost like a psychoanalyst, and I thought, this is a really unique, special individual.
“On top of that, I felt like I just really connected to him, and as I got to know him, it was true. We had a lot of different experiences in life, but shared experiences, and I felt I could learn something by going through this story and feeling these feelings for myself. And if I did that for an audience, I felt like that would be really awesome for an audience to feel his feelings and experience this and realize, ‘Hey, if he can do it, I could do it. I could be OK,'” added Safdie.
The film as also a fulfilling experience for Kerr, who said Safdie is “just brilliant in a way where, I said his superpower is childlike imagination. What makes it a superpower, is it’s infectious.”
“With DJ, he was just a sponge, he would just soak in everything around him, our conversations about all these different aspects of what was going on at that time,” added Kerr. “And my conversations with Emily, I call her an ’emotional detective,’ cause she just digs for these nuggets and pulls them out. It was just an incredible experience.”
Kerr and his ex-wife reunited on the red carpet, along with their onscreen counterparts, celebrating the Los Angeles premiere of the A24 film, which is now in theaters.
