“We found out later”: $165M Box Office Flop Movie Helped Dwayne Johnson Find His Family In The Most Unexpected Way
Hollywood is a strange world where sometimes reality overweighs the complex narratives of movies. And it’s not always the scandals.
One such non-scandalous and rather wholesome instance, which feels like a subplot straight from a family drama, is of Dwayne Johnson discovering he had a blood relative working as his stunt double. Both parties were not aware of their being related. And everything unfolded in the most unexpected yet wholesome way.
Dwayne Johnson Found Family at The Scorpion King Set
Dwayne Johnson‘s The Scorpion King did not find a lot of success at the box office, making only $165 million. However, it did find the Johnson family.
The story is straight out of a movie, only it’s real and unscripted. Tanoai Reed, a stuntman in Hollywood got the job to play Dwayne Johnson’s stunt double in The Scorpion King. When he went to the audition, Johnson’s wardrobe fit him perfectly and he got the part then and there.
Unbeknownst to both Reed and Johnson who share both physical and facial resemblance, they are actually distant cousins.
Talking about how they both were oblivious to their familial relations, Reed told TUDUM by Netflix:
“Yeah, [but] we found out later! I knew we were related somewhere down the line because I have uncles with the same last name. His mom knew my dad — that generation knew each other, but we never met until the set of Scorpion King.”
The Scorpion King was released in 2002 and Reed has been Johnson’s stunt double ever since. The Universe truly has weird ways to bring joy and surprises. However, this wholesome revelation raised some questions.
Did The Rock Help His Cousin in the Industry?
Nepotism in Hollywood has been a hot topic for a long while. With the reveal that The Rock‘s stunt double of over twenty years is actually his cousin, the common assumption is Johnson helped him make it in the industry. And it is not a far-fetched assumption, even though it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The cousins did not know of each other’s existence before working together in The Scorpion King. Moreover, Reed was working as a stuntman long before The Rock became a public figure. As Reed told TUDUM by Netflix:
“A lot of people assume that he was like, ‘Oh, I have a cousin that looks like me, bring him on.’ But I was already doing stunt work before he was in the ring, I think. I started in ’94. He started wrestling in ’96, ’97.”
Safe to say, Reed did not get a family pass to work as The Rock’s stunt double, he built his career on his merit.
The most amusing thing is the fact that Reed would often get comments on how he looks like The Black Adam star but just never knew it. As he shared with TUDUM by Netflix:
“I was told it a lot! Before we actually met, I was him for Halloween — about a year before. It was surreal that a year later I’m working with him.”
Surreal for sure, and fascinatingly weird. Pretending to fall off bridges and jump off trains only to have your cousin’s face pasted on sounds like a great way to bond.
Source: TUDUM by Netflix
