WWE legend and 16-time World Champion John Cena spoke with Jesse Thorn on NPR’s Bullseye on a number of topics, including the importance of vulnerability in a character.
Cena said, “The way you make any character interesting is vulnerability. A lot of characters don’t want to look weak. They’re afraid if they look weak, they won’t have the interest of the audience. You can look weak. What you need to do is connect with the person that you’re trying to communicate with. And a lot of that is the courage to be vulnerable.”
On WWE embracing the mixed reactions he gets from fans:
“Two things can happen — you tell the people who are booing, ‘I hear you, and I don’t like you, and I’ve never liked you,’ and now you’re a bad guy. Or, you block them out. You pretend they’re not there and you keep going about your day. I was told to take the second path, but I did it under my own terms of smiling and remaining authentic to self.”
On the difference between wrestling in the ring and filming action sequences:
“They’re just two different disciplines. The strategies you learn in live performance are different than the strategies you would incorporate with camera cutaways. Uh, in the movies, everything should be a miss. Because you can stack it and [it’s] safety first. Like the goal really, truly is not to hit the other person you’re fighting. If a director should choose or if a coordinator should choose to shoot the impacts, then you’re kind of towing that line.”
“But in live performance … you can’t stack punches. You have to bring them all. So there’s a lot more physical contact. But I like the magic. I don’t like getting hit in the face. So I like the magic aspect of cinema, and it really makes for some wonderful choreography, especially when you can film it in beats and then weave it all together and see it as a masterpiece where, you know, in live performance, you have what you have.”
