Dwayne Johnson brought his Samoan roots to spinoff 'Hobbs & Shaw'
The day Dwayne Johnson's mother came to visit the Kauai set of "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw," emotions were already high. But not even the WWE superstar known in the ring as The Rock was steeled for what he saw after director David Leitch called "Cut!" on one of the most pivotal scenes in the "Fast & Furious" spinoff.
Johnson, in character as Luke Hobbs, the brawny American lawman he's played since "Fast Five," had just led an ensemble of fellow Polynesian actors, including Cliff Curtis and WWE's Roman Reigns, in a siva tau, or Samoan war dance.
This siva tau was special, created specifically for the film with the aid of Samoan cultural consultants. And as a sacred cultural tradition, Johnson told Leitch it warranted sensitivity. With this in mind, Leitch filmed only a few takes rather than the countless coverage angles typical of a blockbuster shoot of this size and scale.
The scene serves as the crackling prelude to a sequence in which Hobbs and his estranged brothers reconcile to face down a threat to humanity as they know it, by daisy-chaining a row of speeding, tricked-out vintage trucks to a helicopter while careening along the edge of a cliff (well, it is a "Fast & Furious" movie). In it, Johnson's Hobbs, his traditional tattoos glistening under the night sky, roars alongside his brothers in arms, calling upon their ancestors.
"I look over and she is bawling," Johnson says,
