John Cena channeled the fate of the furious to land his “Barbie” role.
Cena, who appears as a merman in the Greta Gerwig film, revealed that after being “rejected” from a formal audition, his friendship with lead star Margot Robbie led him to appear in a “Barbie” cameo while filming “Fast X.”
“It was a happy accident,” Cena explained during the “Today” show. “I haven’t worked with Margot before. We literally randomly ran into each other as friends. ‘Fast X‘ was filming across the street from ‘Barbie.’ And [she asked], ‘Why don’t you do “Barbie”?’ I said, ‘I’ve been trying!’ And Margot makes a lot of the decisions for that and I said, ‘Well, I’ll do whatever you need.’”
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 her role as Harley Quinn and Cena playing antagonist Peacemaker. Cena later landed a prequel spinoff Max series centered on his antihero character.
Cena is back as rogue evil Jakob Toretto in the 10th “Fast and Furious” film, opening this weekend.
“I think ‘Barbie’ and ‘Fast X’ share a lot of parallels,” Cena added. “Their cast list is amazing. The ‘Barbie’ cast list is amazing. The ‘Fast X’ cast list is amazing. It was a chance maybe to [say], ‘Hey, would you guys be willing to have me if I could do something?’”
Cena previously shared that he “tried and got rejected” from being cast in “Barbie” during the open casting call. “I get it, I wasn’t a piece for 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 any small parts. A chance is a chance. An opportunity to show your skill or develop a new skill, that’s fantastic. That’s why I want to do all this stuff, so I think once they realized I would just be grateful to be involved, they were like, ‘Yeah, you can do this.’”
For all the details on “Barbie,” click here.
