Professional wrestler Mojo Rawley — also known as Mojo Muhtadi — made an appearance in the recently released Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins. According to the wrestler, his experience in the world of WWE helped him prepare for what life was like on movie sets.
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Speaking in a recent interview with Wrestlezone, Rawley touched on the fact that having to perform near perfectly in the world of professional wrestling helped him immensely when it came to getting takes right in the world of film.
“I know when I was filming Snake Eyes, just that awareness of working the cameras and ‘living the gimmick,’ that kinda thing. That really helped, just being on set and if I messed up, I could do it again. That’s not a thing in WWE,” Rawley said. “You’ve got one shot to make it right and that is it, that’s all you get. If you’d screw up, so be it. Just having that attitude and coming in and being like a one-take guy, that just helped out tremendously.”
While Rawley did note that he learned a bunch from the world of acting, he also noted that he had to “unlearn” some aspects of his wrestling career when it came to working on a movie set. Namely, the concept that not everything has to be larger than life to come across as realistic in a film.
“What I was careful of, to answer your question, was sometimes we get too hokey with it. Sometimes we’re doing these crazy, off-the-wall sells and sometimes it’s like a caricature of a real character,” said Rawley. “It’s played up and turned up to one thousand, so going into a street fight with Snake Eyes, I wanted it to seem authentic. I wanted it to seem like a real fight, so I was very careful about checking some of those wrestling sells we would do in a match.
“That was just one thing, probably the only thing I had to worry about because a career in professional wrestling really did prep me for a life on camera, whether it’s filming a movie or hosting a TV show or anything to that extent. It’s all fairly similar, of course you’ve just got to scale it back a bit or turn it up certain elements of yourself. Overall, it was pretty seamless, I’ve got to say.”
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The G.I. Joe spin-off stars Henry Golding as the titular ninja assassin, Andrew Koji as Storm Shadow, Iko Uwais as Hard Master, Samara Weaving as Scarlett, Úrsula Corberó as Baronness, Peter Mensah as Blind Master, Haruka Abe as Akiko, Takehiro Hira as Kenta, and Steven Allerick.