Matt Damon praises Dwayne Johnson's Performance in Smashing Machine

In a recent interview on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Matt Damon talked about his experience watching The Smashing Machine and singled out one particular scene that really hit him emotionally.

He said the moment where Dwayne Johnson’s character is in a hospital after an overdose “really walloped me” and stayed with him because of how raw and authentic it felt. Damon described how Johnson built that scene collaboratively with director Benny Safdie and pulled from his own life to shape the performance.

Damon explained that when he asked Johnson about how that scene came together, Johnson said they worked on it together and that the emotional core came directly from his own experiences.

Johnson has said in multiple interviews that to portray that breakdown, he drew on deeply personal memories from his family life — especially his father’s struggles with alcoholism and his mother’s cancer diagnosis and treatment. Those lived experiences helped him access the vulnerability required for the scene, particularly moments of denial, fear, and emotional collapse.

In his own words on another interview, Johnson said he thought about the way addicts try to explain themselves and deflect responsibility — something he heard from his father, and also the memory of standing over his mother in a hospital when she was diagnosed with stage 3B lung cancer, watching her pull the sheets over her face in a moment of fear and vulnerability. That mental space became part of how he inhabited Mark Kerr’s emotional breakdown in the film.