John Cena Explains Why He Took Certain Movie Roles During His WWE Career

Between F9, The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, Blockers and Bumblebee, John Cena’s current filmography looks wildly different from his early years in the acting world. The 16-time WWE Champion took on his first movie role in 2006 as the star of WWE Studios’ The Marine and would go on to work in various small projects like 12 Rounds, Legendary and Fred: The Movie. While talking about his acting career on Dermot & Dave, Cena openly admitted those early acting roles weren’t for himself, but rather to help WWE’s popularity.

“When I did those movies in the early 2000s — if anybody saw them, I’ll mail them the check because I owe them some money — the reasons behind it were wrong,” Cena said (h/t Fightful). “I was doing it to try and get WWE more popular rather than wanting to do it. Every second I was on one of those movie sets, I wanted to be back in WWE. Now, I truly enjoy everything that comes with the movie. You can’t have fear of missing out or wanting to be in all places at once. As performers in WWE, we fancy ourselves as versatile and want to be everywhere.”

In a separate interview with Collider, Cena explained how James Gunn reminds him of Vince McMahon with how he runs his filming projects. Cena will star as Peacemaker in Gunn’s Suicide Squad film later this year, followed by the HBO Max Peacemaker series in early 2022.

“James is everything, and the reason he is such a great director is because he assumes all roles,” Cena explained. “He creates the story from the ground up, he supervises the story as a producer, he manages all personalities when he’s on set as a coach, he’s very determined in his selection process of the cast, so he’s a casting agent,” Cena explained, “he’s meticulous on small details, so he’s wardrobe design. He’s a ridiculously intricate storyboarder, so he’s a production designer as well.

“I think his ability to have his hands in everything — he’s almost like the Vince McMahon of a movie,” he continued. “Vince is involved in everything and wants to be. And I mean everything from — and this is James as well — marketing, certainly putting himself out there. ‘Suicide Squad: A James Gunn Film’, he’s putting his stamp on that which means he believes in the product, and he does that so fluently because he’s so invested in every piece of it. He has confidence it what he does. He’s just too many things at once.”