Dwayne Johnson’s NBC series Young Rock premiered on Tuesday night, showing off the former WWE Champion and Fast & Furious star’s upbringing from three different points in his childhood. The framing device for the show is Johnson giving an interview while running for president in 2032. This begs the question — would “The People’s Champ” ever actually run for office? He’s brought it up in the past and kept the door firmly open in a recent interview with USA Today.
“I would consider a presidential run in the future if that’s what the people wanted,” he said. “Truly I mean that, and I’m not flippant in any way with my answer. That would be up to the people…So I would wait, and I would listen. I would have my finger on the pulse, my ear to the ground.”
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Johnson explained why the show uses the presidential storyline in an interview with Jimmy Fallon last week.
“It was our show creator, Nahnatchka Khan, who is just such a brilliant woman,” Johnson explained. “First of all, we wanted to figure out three points of my life that were defining times. When I was 10 years old living here in Hawaii, when I was 15 years old after multiple arrests and doing a lot of things I shouldn’t be doing. And then when I was 18 years old, when I started to get my life a little bit back on track going to the University of Miami. Then she had said, ‘Well, ultimately the audience is going to want to see you. What’s a creative way that we can infuse you into the show?’”
“I said, ‘I don’t know, it feels a little political.’ And she goes, ‘Well there might be a few people who want to see you run for president, so think about it,’” he continued. “So I went home, I talked to Lauren (Hashian, Johnson’s wife), as you and I do we go home and talk to our wives. Lauren said, ‘I think you should do it, I think it’s great.’”
Johnson endorsed Joe Biden, who wound up winning to become the 45th president, in the most-recent presidential election.
