THE RE-RE-REINVENTION OF MARK WAHL-BERG
MARK WAHLBERG IS LETTING IT GO.
IT’S MAY 1, and Wahlberg has been sheltering at home for 39 days with his wife, Rhea Durham; his two daughters, Ella, 16, and Grace, 10; his two sons, Michael, 14, and Brendan, 11; and the family’s new addition, a Pomeranian named Champ who has nearly 80,000 followers on Instagram and rules the house. The actor-producer-businessman, who once caused a disturbance on the Internet with a post about how he starts each day at 2:30 A.M. and schedules everything in 15-minute increments, rolls out of bed around 9:00. He eats a vegetarian breakfast, often plant-based sausage with a sweet-potato patty and avocado, washed down with three juice shots: greens, turmeric, and apple-cider vinegar with raw garlic and ginger. “Everyone hates it, because when I start burping, it smells like a restaurant.”
He finally heads down to his basement gym at 10:30 A.M. “That’s usually like my midafternoon lunchtime,” he says. “I’m still training five days a week, but now my wife is with me. I feel like I’m a human alarm clock. I’m pushing her to get down there…. The rest of the day, I’m eating more and drinking more wine than I normally would.” We’re on a Zoom video call, and Wahlberg is sitting at the desk in his home office. He is in quarantine casual—sweatpants, a red T-shirt, bed head—fancied up with a crucifix on a chain. “I’m just maintaining until I get the word that we might be going back to work. Then I’ll get super disciplined again.”
That discipline switch has been dialed up to 11—for the past 30 years—and it’s helped Wahlberg earn a unique place in our cultural memory and imagination. As Marky Mark, he rapped into our collective consciousness, buffand shirtless, with “Good Vibrations,” which hit number one in 1991. A year later, he helped make showing your underwear waistband a thing, posing in nothing but his Calvin Klein sport trunks. We didn’t really expect to see him again, but then he started acting. At first he popped up in minor roles, but he steadily earned bigger parts, shifting from gritty dramas to action blockbusters to raucous comedies. Often Wahlberg played characters who were larger than life yet still relatable. He’s the porn star with
