Young Rock, which centers around the upbring of Hollywood star and former WWE Champion Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, only ever hinted at “The People’s Champ’s” WWF/E career during its first season. But that appears to be changing with Season 2, as PWInsider‘s Mike Johnson is now reporting that the NBC series is currently casting a few major figures from Johnson’s rookie year with the WWF in 1996-97, including Triple H, The Undertaker, Harvey Wippleman, The Brooklyn Brawler and Steve Lombardi.
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The initial season focussed around three time periods in Johnson’s life — 1982 while living in Hawaii while his father (WWE Hall of Famer Rocky Johnson) was on the verge of being signed by the WWF, 1987 while he was in high school in New Jersey and the 1990s while he was playing football at the University of Miami. The last time period had a few nods towards Johnson’s wrestling future but ends with him intending to continue his football career (which would take him up to the Canadian Football League).
Previous casting reports have indicated the show will also show more of Rocky Johnson’s professional wrestling career and actors portraying legends like Jerry Lawler, Tommy Rick, Bam Bam Bigelow, Big John Studd, Freddie Blassie, Mr. Fuji and Roddy Piper are expected to appear. The second season is slated to premiere in February 2022 on NBC.
Series executive producer Brian Gewirtz spoke with ComicBook prior to the first season’s premiere and explained why the show didn’t initially start with Johnson’s pro wrestling career.
“Well, when we first started conceiving the show, a lot of the brainstorming revolved around Dwayne telling stories of his life to our partners and the show creators, Nahnatchka Khan and Jeff Chang,” Gewirtz explained. “The stories were so wild and so buried throughout his life. It seems like if you’re putting all your cards into Little Dewey in 1982, you can somewhat tell that there’s always a possibility that you could eventually get there, but you never know with television. Stories of him in Bethlehem, and Memphis and the University of Miami and meeting all these iconic figures, it also blew up in some pretty dramatic [ways] for people in his life. It seemed like a much richer show and more complete to be able to extend to these three eras and still having a turn….like you just mentioned, a break in the WWE, there’s so many places for us to go as well.
