Former WWE Superstar The Rock was recently interviewed by WSVN-TV entertainment reporter Chris Van Vliet in Las Angeles this past weekend to promote his Disney animated film MOANA. You can check out the highlights here:
Van Vliet to Rock: “So we’ll see you in April? Orlando?”
Rock:”What’s in Orlando?”
Vliet: “A little thing called WrestleMania.”
Rock: “Sure, ya I’ll see you there.”
On how singing in WWE helped him in MOANA:
“What really helped was Lin-Manuel Miranda who wrote the music for our movie, did a lot of research and he pulled up all of those old concerts that I used to do in a WWE ring where I’m singing and I’m talking and I’m singing and I’m talking s–t. He had the greatest time doing that and he thought the perfect song for me would be a song called ‘You’re Welcome’. Lin’s a genius, I loved working with him. He’s phenomenal. So when he sent me the song I thought ‘OK, sounds good. I can do this’ and then it goes into a rap and I thought ‘alright, I’m down. Let’s do this. I’ll spit that fire!'”
On voicing an animated character being one of the hardest roles he’s taken:
“It was a great challenge for me because it was a different muscle to exercise. It’s one thing when we’re just talking like this, but it’s another thing to really inject life into your voice and intonation.”
On why he left WWE for Hollywood:
“I wanted to challenge myself. And I wanted to be better. And I didn’t want to settle. I was really fortunate to accomplish what I accomplished in wrestling. I loved it. There’s nothing like wrestling. That crowd, I love it. But I also wanted more and there’s that interesting thing when you’re lucky enough to get that little bit of success and then you want to do something else that’s not your forte, that clearly is not, but you’re willing to take the challenge on, you’re met with a lot of cynicism. You gotta fight through that and you gotta listen to the voice inside and then you gotta bring it.”
(All transcribed quotes courtesy of Wrestling Inc.)
