In Jalon Christian and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's first scene together in "Black Adam," audience members may be stunned to see a much different version of the former WWE superstar than they're used to. While Johnson is as committed an actor as they come, he didn't resort to the Tom Hanks "Cast Away" method to lose weight and muscle to shoot the scenes.
Instead, Christian said, the production — helmed by director Jaume Collet-Serra — resorted to employing an additional actor and a bit of movie magic to create Johnson's slimmed-down appearance. "I filmed most of my scenes with another actor, whose name is Benjamin [Patterson], and they would put white dots on his face to calibrate it," Christian told Looper. "They would have him do the scene with me, then have The Rock do it so that they could calibrate The Rock's face onto his body before The Rock becomes Black Adam."
In addition to seeing the visual effects work happen right before his eyes, Christian said he was fascinated by watching Johnson's process as an actor while they were on set together and learning from it.
"[At] certain times we would joke around and talk to each other, but there were also times where he was very into the character and in the moment," Christian said. "Some actors are very method and love to be in their characters at all times; some actors work a different way. To be able to observe his process definitely helped me be able to work on my performance."
Also starring Pierce Brosnan, Aldis Hodge, Sarah Shahi, Quintessa Swindell, and Noah Centineo, "Black Adam" is new theaters.
