For the upcoming action comedy Jackpot, John Cena used his WWE experience to teach co-star Awkwafina how to throw a punch during a sequence when she was supposed to break his nose, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“I’ve had my nose broken in real life and this was a prosthetic so that was fantastic. I really think the setup for it was fun and when she actually did it and we did the gag, it looked great and it plays well in the movie,” Cena told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s premiere on Tuesday, adding that he told Awkwafina to “swing for the fences, and she did.”
The film, directed by Paul Feig, depicts a newly founded Grand Lottery in California, where lottery losers can legally collect their multi-billion dollar jackpot by killing the winner before dusk. Awkwafina is the jackpot winner on the run, and Cena is her collaborator.
While talking about the chemistry, Cena shared, “She was playing an anxious character who didn’t know what the hell was going on, and I get to be a peaceful, soothing voice of reason. And I think those are both really strong assets of our wheelhouse so we kind of just got to be ourselves and have jokes and funniness around that.”
Jackpot, which also stars Simu Liu, has drawn comparisons to a comedic version of The Purge or John Wick, but Feig points out those movies “don’t have a great view of mankind. I wanted it to be good natured, so even though this has a really dark core, it’s the fact that you buy into the lottery — if you’re in the lottery you’ve decided that you approve of it. But you find out as the movie goes along that most people don’t actually approve of the lottery and are actually more fans of Awkwafina’s who are rooting for her to get to the end.”