Benny Safdie on Directing His First Movie Without Brother Josh
For the new film The Smashing Machine, Benny Safdie is breaking out on his own, directing his first movie without brother Josh after the duo teamed up for 2019’s Uncut Gems and 2017’s Good Time.
The project stars Dwayne Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr — following the ups and downs of his personal and professional life — and at the Los Angeles premiere on Monday, Safdie told The Hollywood Reporter, “it wasn’t really an adjustment” to be at the helm solo.
“I had been acting a lot on my own for a while, and there’s a level of independence that you have there,” he explained of working without Josh. “And then I made a TV show with my friend Nathan, The Curse, so it’s been a process of, ‘What do I want to explore?’”
That exploration has led both himself and Josh to the sports world, as Josh has his first solo project, Marty Supreme, coming out later this year.
Johnson — who stars alongside Emily Blunt as his wife Dawn — takes on his first major dramatic role with the project, which Safdie said he knew the superstar was capable of after he “looked into his eyes and I just saw.”
“He’s such a larger than life guy you don’t know what to expect, and then when I met him I was just like, ‘Wow, this guy’s unbelievable, he really is like the real deal,’” the director remembered. “And I just thought, wow, he really can embody this in a way that would be really special and I think we can get at a really layered, complicated performance with this.”
Blunt served as a matchmaker between Safdie and Johnson, as the two men had originally discussed the project in 2019, but it never came to fruition. Years later, when Blunt and Safdie were both working on Oppenheimer, they discussed the idea again and Blunt, a longtime friend of Johnson’s, reunited them.
The actress said she knew Johnson could take on such a different role because “he’s a very profound person, in many ways he’s the opposite of the persona of The Rock. I think The Rock almost simplifies him. He’s a human being and has had a life and has struggled and he’s able to access all of that as a person and as a friend, so I was excited to see him put that in front of the camera.”
Johnson, meanwhile, noted he has been trying to make a pivot into more serious acting for “a while — almost 10 years ago I had this voice behind my ribcage that’s been just gnawing at my gut saying, ‘Hey, you can do more and you should do more.’ And I was trying’” in bringing Kerr’s story to Safdie before the pandemic. He continued, “It’s been a long time coming and I’m so grateful to experience what I was able to experience. And finally, to be honest with you, face my fears and jump off the cliff.”
And after that first day of shooting, Johnson — who donned 22 prosthetics and added 30 pounds of muscle for the part — recalled that “it was myself, Emily and Benny, we were having a little bit of tequila and she said, ‘When you walked on the air changed and you could feel it,’ and that moved me, it validated me.”
The Smashing Machine hits theaters on Friday.
