But the actress is not having it. “You would be lost without your lip balm!” she says. “And you wouldn’t have your soap. He’s the cleanest human being alive. He needs to shower about five times a day.” Blunt slams down her hand and looks at their interviewer. “Now, what else do you want to know?” Though it’s inspired, at least in name, by the 66-year-old Disneyland ride, the pair say the film is more akin to some of their all-time favorite adventure movies, such as the 1951 Bogart and Hepburn classic The African Queen, 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (“I wanted to be Indiana Jones,” says Johnson) and 1984’s Romancing the Stone (which Blunt says she used to watch over and over). “I think people have tried to emulate those movies with very little success, but I read this script, it felt reminiscent in a very loyal way,” she says. “It really pierced my heart. It’s romantic, a roller coaster of liberated adventure and it just feels like an event.” Johnson first became friendly with Blunt’s husband, actor JohnKrasinski. “I was a fan of John’s and had a few talks with him,” he says of The Office alum and Jack Ryan star. He took notice of Blunt when she played MerylStreep’s tart-tongued assistant in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada. “I decided to check it out because I had just wrapped Get Smart with [her Prada co-star] AnneHathaway,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Who is this actress?! She’s amazing.’” Blunt shakes her head while recalling her first encounter with Johnson. He walked into a restaurant, she says, and she made a loud, public scene when she spotted him. “I went, ‘Oh, my God!,’ because I imagined him to be this sort of larger-than-life person with a personality to match,” she says. “But he just said, ‘Hey, how are you?,’ and was so quiet and shy. “I soon realized he was this gentle soul. He’s also wise and funny. The antithesis of what you’d expect. I knew we were going to buds just after that one night.”
Hello, Hollywood
Neither took the easy route to Hollywood. Johnson is the son of RockyJohnson, a pioneering wrestler, and AtaMaivia, who has ties to a legendary clan of Samoan wrestlers. Despite the rich legacy, he grew up poor as he and his family bounced around several states and New Zealand before his 18th birthday. But even as kid, he says, “I was fairly confident; I used to think I was a combination of ElvisPresley, BruceLee, RichardPryor and HarrisonFord.” He played football at the University of Miami and earned a degree in criminology with the vague notion of joining the FBI. “I had a great professor in college,” he says. “He told me that I would be great as an agent in the field and wanted me to go to law school. But my grades weren’t good enough.” A career in the NFL was out too, due to injuries. He decided to join professional wrestling, because, he says flatly, “it was a pathway to not being broke.” Originally billed as “Rocky Maivia” and then “The Rock,” Johnson entertained sold-out crowds with his charismatic bravado (and raised eyebrow) as a World Wrestling Federation and World Wrestling Entertainment superstar from 1996 to 2004. His popularity earned him the chance to play the villain in the 2001 sci-fi adventure flick The Mummy Returns. That’s when the then-father-to-be (his oldest daughter, Simone, was born in August 2001) had an epiphany while filming on location in a Moroccan desert. “I decided I loved acting,” he says. “I realized, ‘Oh, wow, I could make money from this and take care of my family. I don’t have to beat up my body as much.’ And not only that, I stepped into a culture where everyone worked hard to ensure you could deliver the performance; there was camaraderie. Every other field I was in, it was like kill or be killed, because you were on your own.” Johnson never became an FBI field agent, but—as a $10 billion-grossing box-office behemoth in Hollywood mega-smashes—he’s become one of the world’s most recognizable “good guys.” He’s rescued people from earthquakes (San Andreas), inferno buildings (Skyscraper), mutated animals (Rampage), drowning in the ocean (Baywatch—which he boasts received a Razzie Award for a movie “So Rotten You Loved It”) and villains in the wild (two Jumanji movies). He has also appeared as former Diplomatic Security Service agent Hobbs in four Fast & Furious movies plus a spinoff and as a sports agent in HBO’s Ballers. He even has an NBC sitcom, Young Rock, based on his life. Across the pond, Blunt grew up in the Roehampton area of southwest London in a middle-class household with three siblings. Her barrister dad, Oliver, “was famous for bringing home really inappropriate films for us to watch when we were young,” she says. “I saw Pretty Woman when I was 12 and loved it!” She was especially taken by the scene in the classic thriller Jaws when RobertShaw’s character gives his iconic monologue about the World War II disaster that befell his fellow seamen. “It blew my head back. I started really getting interested in performance and the subtleties.” (She rewatched it during quarantine.) Blunt discovered that acting in school plays an as adolescent helped smooth out her childhood stutter. “When you act, you access a different part of your brain because you’re being someone else in a heightened environment,” she explains. “It’s a removal of yourself that allows the sort of fluency. I felt liberated by that.” She works today with the nonprofit group the Stuttering Foundation to help others with the same issue. She hustled for a catering company and intended to attend university in 2001. “I was going to study Spanish and wanted to be an interpreter for the UN,” she says. But she put that off because of a pinch-me opportunity: a supporting role opposite JudiDench in the West End play The Royal Family. She was 18. “I feel like I entered the industry in a pretty casual way but didn’t go into it with rose-tinted glasses either,” she says. “I just thought I’d give it a go. I figured I didn’t have to wait tables anymore.” And off she went. Blunt appeared in more plays and several art-house movies before her Golden Globe–nominated performance in The Devil Wears Prada. “After that, I was offered every single acerbic British person [role] on planet Earth,” she says. “I knew I had to break the mold, otherwise I’d be pigeonholed as being this horrible person all the time.” She’s since racked up credits in such diverse projects as Sicario, Into the Woods, The Girl on the Train and A Quiet Place. She co-starred with her director-actor husband in the latter. “People asked if we had fun,” she says of the nail-biting, adrenaline-pumping thriller. “No! What an intense world.” The acclaimed sequel recently grossed $57 million in its opening weekend after a year-long COVID-affected delay. Johnson and Blunt relish their own quiet places with their families, though things were decidedly less quiet during the pandemic. Johnson and his family—5-year-old daughter Jasmine, and a 3-year-old, Tiana, with his wife of two years, LaurenHashian, 36—jumped between Georgia, California and Hawaii. When the entire Johnson clan all fell ill with the virus last August, “We got knocked down,” he says. “We were trying to look for the silver linings in being at home but when we all got sick with such an insidious disease, it was a real eye-opener. We had friends who lost family members or got extremely sick so we were waiting and hoping that things didn’t go sideways.” He’s happy and relieved to report everyone has recovered. Blunt and Krasinski, along with their two daughters, Hazel, 7, and Violet, 5, uprooted from their condo in Brooklyn Heights to Bedford, New York, and then on to London last August (where the kids attended school). “I’m a perpetual planner and love to look on the horizon, so I had to learn how to let go and have patience,” Blunt says. “There was no other option but to surrender to it all.” She adds, “I also learned I’m great at making banana bread, and terrible at teaching math.”
Disney VIPs
For all the miles once and currently separating them, Johnson and Blunt can both bond over their childhood experiences on the very ride that serves as the title of their film. Johnson says he headed to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, quite a bit when he lived in nearby Tampa; Blunt visited California’s Disneyland when she was 5 and admits, “I found the whole thing frightening; I had a thing about people in costumes. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I was not a Disney kid.” Now Johnson and Blunt are Disney VIPs, thanks to their respective musical roles in Moana (2016) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). Blunt has given park passes to her nieces and nephews. (Fun fact: Her older sister, Felicity, is married to her Prada co-star StanleyTucci.) In pre-pandemic times, Johnson often went to Disneyland with his family and got the royal treatment: “It’s interesting because everybody has been standing in line for a long time and gets so upset when they see people get ushered up to the front. But then the reaction is, ‘Hey, it’s the Rock! Go! Go! Go!’” With his hulking 6-foot-5 frame, he matter-of-factly acknowledged in 2020 that his anonymity “has gone out the window.” Fans don’t just want selfies; they want tips for working out or achieving life success. Wearing a face mask, he admits a year later, “allowed me a certain freedom to go out.” Still, he misses those interactions: “I truly do love meeting people,” he says. Blunt says the younger set usually approaches her about Mary Poppins Returns—after their parents tip them off. “Small kids don’t understand why [when she’s out of costume as Mary Poppins] I look nothing like her! But it’s lovely to have that effect on a kid.” If Jungle Cruise connects Blunt and Johnson even more with their fans, even better. And the stars hope that an old-fashioned adventure on the big screen can provide the ultimate escape. “Coming out of this time of such uncertainty and just being cooped up, a film like Jungle Cruise encapsulates everything we’ve been craving because it’s gorgeous and tropical and fun and has a sense of nostalgia,” Blunt says. “It’s like a joy bomb.” Seconds Johnson, “It captures the right spirit and really is big family fun. We’re so excited for people to finally see it. Oh, and by the way,” he adds, “Joy bomb was my nickname in college!”
Fast & Fun
What makes you laugh? Johnson: “Emily Blunt.” Blunt: “John Krasinski.” What makes you cry? Johnson: “It’s a cheesy answer, but It’s a Wonderful Life.” Blunt: “I was blubbering during the last episode of [2020 Netflix docuseries] Cheer.” What did you screen during quarantine? Johnson: “Like everyone else, I was fascinated by [Netflix’s] Tiger King.” Blunt: “The MichaelJordan documentary [ESPN’s The Last Dance] and [Netflix’s] Last Chance U. I hate watching sports but love sports docs.” Favorite time of day? Johnson: “When the sun comes up, because it’s time to start the day.” Blunt: “Dusk, because the light is so pretty.” Junk-food splurge? Johnson: “A cheat meal of brioche French toast smothered in peanut butter.” Blunt: “I’ll take down a double cheeseburger from Shake Shack or In-N-Out Burger.” Secret passion? Johnson: “I love country music, from MerleHaggard to SturgillSimpson.” Blunt: “I used to be quite good at languages, especially French and Spanish.” Childhood celebrity crush? Johnson: “I can’t think. SylvesterStallone?” Blunt: “I was really into JasonPriestley. He was on my wall.” Next, 125 Disney Memes to Make You Embrace (and Laugh at) the Magic of Fairy Tales, Monsters, Mickey Mouse and Everything in Between
