Along with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jason Statham, Helen Miren, and Idris Elba, the cast of Fast and Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw includes WWE Superstar Roman Reigns. In some ways, Johnson’s real-life cousin being cast has one of his brothers isn’t surprising. But considering that his career has involved delivering some infamously bad WWE dialogue, he wasn’t the most natural pick to cross over from pro wrestling to acting. Plus, on a much more significant note, Reigns was in treatment for leukemia around the time Hobbs & Shaw was filmed.
Fast and Furious franchise writer Chris Morgan talked to ComicBook.com about Reigns’ scenes in the movie. While Reigns ended up participating in a “pretty insane” fight scene, Morgan says they kept his health issues in mind.
When we were putting together the Hobbs brothers, we knew right away that we wanted to bring him in. And so Dwayne had reached out and said – you’ll have to talk to him about this, but paraphrasing – he’s like, “Brother, I know what you’re going through, and whatever, and I want to support you, and we’d love to, at a minimal level, if you want to come in, if it’s fun for you, great, and if not, we want to have action and stuff for you.”
Morgan also confirmed that elements of the Rock and Reigns’ WWE characters would be seen in the fight scene, so don’t be shocked if you see the Superman Punch become part of the Fast and Furious cinematic universe.
