Jungle Cruise is already shaping up to be one of the most thrilling action/adventure movies of the summer. Whether you’re checking in out in theaters or on Disney+ Premiere Access, you can’t go wrong. However, according to the press junket for the film with Emily Blunt, Dwayne Johnson, Jack Whitehall, and Edgar Ramirez, that almost didn’t happen. Panel host Nikki Novak asked the question to Emily Blunt right off the bat:
Novak: Uh, so first, I just want to kick things off and ask you, you famously ghosted this man.
Blunt: I know, yeah.
Novak: The first person on Earth, I’m sure to ever ghost Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson: And the last one.
That one got a big kick out of the panel, but it led to a bigger discussion about how the actual ghosting went down.
The Only Person To Ever Ghost Dwayne Johnson
Blunt: I just wanted to play a little bit hard to get, and that’s fine.
Johnson: Well, let me give out friends here just some context as to what happened. So, our director Jaume Collet-Serra, was flying to New York to meet Emily to hand deliver the Jungle Cruise script.
Blunt: Yes.
Johnson: He delivered it to her, and as he went, I said: ‘Listen, I’m gonna send you a video, and just give her the video from me.’ So I gave her this video. Maybe a minute, two minutes. But in the video, I s-
Blunt: 10 minutes long.
Johnson: It was 25 minutes long, guys. I said, ‘Emily…’
Blunt: Persuasive video.
Johnson: ‘…you are the only one who can do this movie.’
Blunt: Yeah. I was very touched.
Johnson: And she was very touched. And she…
Blunt: Very touched. Jack attests to this as a British person.
Whitehall: Yup.
Eventually it led to a discussion about how Emily never responded to the video. She went on to say that Dwayne came on a bit too strong in the video trying to get her for the role.
Hopefully we can eventually see the either 1-2 or 10 or 25 minute video of Dwayne Johnson trying to woo Emily Blunt for the Jungle Cruise role. Maybe that’s a Blu-ray extra down the line.
Jack Whitehall and Dwayne Johnson Talk About Their Emotional Scene Together In Jungle Cruise
One scene in particular is a one-on-one conversation that Dwayne’s character Frank and Jack Whitehall’s character MacGregor have together about love. It’s one of the most moving and powerful in the entire film.
Johnson: I’m gonna, let me take this really quickly, Jack. I felt that the scene was really exactly what it was, which was two men talking about what they loved and who they loved. It was as simple as that, and we were sharing a drink. Jack?
Whitehall: Yeah, I think it was a scene that we really wanted to get right, and I think to what Emily was talking about earlier. I think what’s so great about this movie is that all of the characters feel so fleshed out, and all of them have, you know, interesting backstories and are fully realized. You know, in a lot of movies of this kind of genre sometimes, you’d have characters that are a little bit kinda two dimensional.
The scene they’re talking about is one that people are sure to love when they see the film. It’s a great one and a tone setter for the rest of the movie. They’re right, the characters of Jungle Cruise are definitely more fleshed out and the movie succeeds because of it.
Give our review of Jungle Cruise a read before or after you check out the film.
Make sure to go check out Jungle Cruise in theaters of on Disney+ Premiere Access this Friday, July 30th, 2021.
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