John Cena channeled the fate of the furious to land his role as ‘Barbie’.
Cena, who appears as a merman in Greta Gerwig’s film, has revealed that after being “rejected” from a formal audition, his friendship with leading lady Margot Robbie led to him appearing in a “Barbie” cameo during the filming of “Fast X”.
“It was a happy accident,” Cena explained on the “Today” show. “I’ve never worked with Margot before. We literally met randomly as friends. “Fast X” was filming across the street from “Barbie”. And (she asked), ‘Why don’t you do “Barbie”?’ I said, ‘I tried!’ And Margot makes a lot of decisions because of that and I said, ‘Well, I’ll do whatever you need to do.’”
Cena continued, “They asked me if I wanted to be a merman, and I said, ‘Yeah, sure.'”
Both Cena and Robbie starred in James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad,” with Robbie reprising his role as Harley Quinn and Cena playing the antagonist Peacemaker. Cena later got a spin-off prequel to the Max series centered around his anti-hero character.
Cena is back as the villainous Jakob Toretto in the tenth film of ‘Fast and Furious,’ out this weekend.
“I think ‘Barbie’ and ‘Fast X’ share a lot of parallels,” Cena added. “Their cast list is incredible. The cast list of ‘Barbie’ is incredible. The cast list for ‘Fast X’ is amazing. Was it maybe a chance to (say), ‘Hey, guys, would you be willing to have me if I could do anything?’”
Cena previously shared that “tried and was rejected” from being cast in “Barbie” during open casting. “I get it. I wasn’t a piece of the puzzle,” Cena said on SiriusXM’s “Pop Culture Spotlight with Jessica Shaw” talk show. “I think a lot of times people think, ‘Oh, he wouldn’t do that.’ I don’t think there are small parts. A chance is a chance. An opportunity to showcase your skill or develop a new skill, that’s great. That’s why I want to do all of these things, so I think once they realized that I’d just be grateful to get involved, they said, ‘Yeah, you can do that.’”
For all the details on “Barbie”, click here.
