Young Rock wraps up its third season tonight on NBC, capping off what has easily been the show’s biggest season After two seasons of build-up, the show finally started recreating classic moments from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s time in the WWE. Brian Gewirtz, one of the show’s executive producers and a former head writer for WWE, talked with ComicBook this week about getting the chance to recreate one of the hottest eras in pro wrestling history — The Attitude Era.
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“Yeah, it was pretty surreal, and it was exciting,” Gewirtz said. “And it was something that I’ve been looking forward to ever since we did the pilot in Australia two seasons ago. It’s really cool to see it come to life and get to… For me, it’s surreal to re-experience it in terms of being backstage. But there’s this giant world that hasn’t really been explored in terms of scripted television, in terms of the Attitude Era, in terms of the backstage machinations of what really went on with Vince (McMahon), Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, The Undertaker, Mick Foley and all that type of stuff. I know it’s something that the fans have been waiting for such a long time. We wanted to tell Dwayne’s story from the beginning, we felt it would be like a chief just to jump right into the Attitude Era. You really needed to know where he came from and his struggles, and his failures at the University of Miami in football and the CFL to really have this period of time be earned. But yeah, it’s really great, and I think we really only scratched the surface.”
Brian Gewirtz on Young Rock’s Chad Frost Character
The show wound up going viral back in mid-January shortly after Episode 8, titled “Going Heavy” aired. The episode showed Rock (Uli Latukefu) having to deal with backstage politics as its top star at the time, Chad Frost, was shown spreading lies about “The Great One” to Vince McMahon. The only problem was that Chad Frost doesn’t exist, and the show itself even acknowledged Johnson was using a pseudonym for an actual wrestler. Even though Frost was depicted as a black man with long dreadlocks tied into a ponytail and dressed head-to-toe in denim, fans quickly came to the conclusion that the show was actually talking about WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels.
Other legends have talked in the past about Michaels’ attempts to bully Johnson as he was rising up the ranks, and “The Heartbreak Kid” was the biggest WWE star of the era to not get depicted by an actor on the show. However, Gewirtz hinted at Frost being an amalgam of multiple wrestlers and that causing the speculation was deliberate.
“Well, that’s the assumption that it is Shawn Michaels. It could be anyone. It could be The Mountie, it could be one of several Doinks,” Gewirtz said, somewhat jokingly. “But in actuality too, it could be an amalgamation. How many people, it doesn’t have to be specifically centered on one person. But the bottom line is, I think this was a real notch, and Jeff (Chiang) came up with this device to be able to tell this story and have people guessing and have people speculating, and also not burying somebody in the process. Because what’s the point of that? I don’t think anybody’s holding grudges in 2023 from the backstage wrestling politics of 1996. I think everybody’s beyond that. But rather than telling it like a story that’s so linear, let’s have some fun and let’s have some speculation. And a lot of people were speculating, obviously.”
How Did Becky Lynch Get Cast as Cyndi Lauper in Young Rock Season 3?
One of the undisputed highlights of the season turned out to be current WWE star Becky Lynch appearing in multiple episodes as 80’s pop icon Cyndi Lauper. Gewirtz explained how that casting came about.
“It was a group effort, but I will say I did text Dwayne and was like, ‘It would be pretty great if Becky could play Cyndi Lauper. I don’t know if she has the voice machinations to pull off the accent.’ And Dwayne thought it was a great idea, and we approached (Nahnatchka Khan) and Jeffwith it. And (they) just made it very clear… ‘Hey, that would be great. But obviously, she would need to audition, and she’d need to audition with every other performer who’s going out for this role. And then like we do with every role, we’ll review all the top auditions through our casting department, and if it works out great, but no promises.’
“And we’re like, ‘Hey, fair enough. We don’t want to just hand anybody anything, especially if it’s not going to work out.’ And Becky put in the work. And Becky really, really trained hard with a voice coach and dialect coach. And we saw her audition tape and we were all just floored. We were like, ‘oh my God, how is this happening? This is amazing.’ And then we were all in universal agreement. Yeah, she’s the one. It was really fortuitous, and she knocked it out of the park,” he added.
Young Rock’s Season 3 finale airs tonight at 8:30 ET on NBC.
