John Cena

- My name is John Cena and I am... (upbeat music) - Curiously enthusiastic about being called a Brian's friend. (laughing) - That sounds like there's an out today.

- Yeah, you know.

John Cena's one of those guys that's always thinking

like nine moves ahead. (upbeat music) ♪ Follows you in the old ♪ ♪ Back to school ♪ ♪ Ring the bell ♪

♪ And the shoes ♪ ♪ Walkin' loose, climb the fence ♪ ♪ Books and pens ♪ ♪ I can tell that we are gonna be friends ♪ ♪ So I can tell that we are gonna be friends ♪ - Hey there, welcome to Connor Brian Needs,

a friend, Son of a Session. - Hello. - My co-pilot. And this is a plane that has two co-pilots, or you a navigator.

- Not really quite sure. - I got it, it's backwards and, you know, takes a nap while you fly. - Yeah, I did that too. - I feel like you just want to.

- This is one pilot. - This is two of those. - And Gorgley, good to see you. What's happening, Matt? You've got, it looks like you have a B in your bonnet.

You've got something to talk about.

“- I think there might be something you're interested in”

happening, not far from actually from where I live. The original Wayne Manor from the '60s Batman show is for sale. - I heard about this. - And basically it's just the house,

the mansion that was used in the exterior shot. So the '60s Batman TV show for people my generation was the formative comedy experience. - Yeah.

- And it's up for sale, only $32 million.

- That's like how to cushion money. - You also might know it from the Charles Bronson film saying, "Ives." - Oh, that's where I know it from. - Yeah.

- Oh, okay. - $32 million, where is it? - It's in Pasadena. That is extremely weird. That is such a lot of money, how much land is it?

- It's big, I mean, look at this though. It's, you know, it's not unlike what it looks like inside the TV show Batman. - Oh, really? They actually made an attempt to,

I mean, it's just a stately manner. - Stately? - It looks like a building on the U.S.C. campus. - I know there's a lot more pictures, yeah. Look at these, so like it has a resort pools

surrounded by boulders and stuff like that. - Can I give you by this for me, Conan? - This, you know what's so funny when people, it looks like something that would be in the English countryside, but it's in L.A.

You know, kind of not far from the mansion to the border. - Can you buy this for me, Conan? - What's it? - Can you buy it for me? - Sure.

But just think of the crazy shit that probably went down here because this is right in front of the Arroyo, the Pasadena Arroyo, which is famous for being the place where Jack Parsons, Alistair Crowley, and Elran Hubbard used to go and jerk off into the dirt

for their sex magic rituals. - What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

“- I said what I said, and that's what happened.”

- How do you know that? - How does anybody know that? - Did someone see them? - There's Pasadena Arroyo, a festival celebration. - You were a love, there's a lot of trust involved

when you say, "Hey Conan, I've got the intro." (laughing) And I think, like, okay, Goroly says he's got it. Goroly, what's up, and you say,

"Well, first of all, I want to use a podcast

to show photos of some real estate." (laughing) Nothing famous happened in this house. It was in one exterior shop that was used again and again, and again, for Batman,

then you start showing interior photos, which has nothing to do with Batman, and then you use that as a segue into a couple of guys orgasming into the dirt. And so, no, I gave you this mighty craft.

I was the pilot, and the guy who sleeps and sits facing the other way, said, "Can I take over?" and I said, "Yes," and now we've slammed into the Himalayas. - Why is it a circle jerk?

Or were they a jerk in themselves? - But they were jerking into a circle in the dirt.

“- Is there, you know, Alistair Crowley was the Satanist?”

- Yeah, maybe explain who people are. 'Cause you love to toss these names. I mean, I know who Alistair Crowley is, but a lot of people don't. - I don't know, I know who Alistair Crowley is.

And I'll tell you something. Baz, Scalaway, Gib, Mumford, and Stabbis McNulty used to get together. Who cares? So, was Alistair Crowley who else?

- Who was a Satanist, but... - Well, he was, he had the Satan Bible and all that stuff. But he believed, well, he had the ritual called sex magic. - Satan had a Bible. - He just, Satan just went through it and wrote,

"Not in front of everything." (laughing) - You would be better if it was after everything. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- That was Schultenot Kill, in my pants. (laughing) That was Schultenot Kill, in my pants. - Well, if that's when that happened, there was an in my pants.

So, Alistair Crowley, who else? - Elron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. - Of course, Jack Parsons, who they all lived at the same time, I thought Alistair Crowley was live before the guy. - I was just an older, I think he was around.

- And he's still able to get it up into the dirt.

- I don't know.

- It was three for three, I don't know how it was.

- He found a Jeep was a Jack Parsons laboratory, and then they changed it to Jet Propulsion Laboratory. - Oh, good question. - You didn't know they jerked off and dirt. I don't know about like the dirt, the name stuff.

- Yeah, what's that? Go ahead, Eduardo. It seems like someone is right, though. - Did you just go on dirt? - No, I'm not.

- I didn't look up any of that. - Yeah, so Jack Parsons co-founder of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. - And he was in the Jack Parsons laboratory. - That JPL is stands for Jack Parsons and not Jet Propulsion. But it's called Jet Propulsion.

That's really funny. I'm sorry, it's not that funny, you know what? It's not funny at all.

“- I think it's funny that these three men”

were just like all realized they had the same king. - And then did it together? - That's funny. - Can I say I think if you're aroused by dirt and you live in an agrarian area,

you're hard all the time. - They weren't?

- They were aroused by dirt.

They went into to do this ritual apparently. It was called Sex Magic. It was some kind of like conjuring of their energy. Look, I'm not condoning this. And that's as far as I know about it.

- I've got tried it. - That's as far as you know about it. - That's as far as he knows about it. - Oh, please. - This whole area of the royal, you know,

there's this big green and green, beautiful craftsman mansion that's featured in season two of True Detective and there's a huge Sex Orgy there. - I'm sorry. - What?

What other kind of Orgy's are there? - I don't have a sex Orgy. - I can choose because I'm trying to figure out are you primarily interested in real estate and it leads to sex or are you interested in kinky sex?

- Why can't it be both? And then it's attached to real estate. - Well, let me tell you. - Because I would love it if you were. - I would love it if you were my realtor.

And I was like, you know, lies in I, we sold our house,

we're kind of looking for something new.

You want to show you a place, it's beautiful. It's sort of a, it's a modernist design. It's got a little of a Bauhaus influence and hobos. You still live in the basement and shove, shove corn cobs up each other's ass.

- You know what I'm talking about? - That's the kind of real estate agent I like. - And then my questions would all be things like, now, is it permitted, could we take that? Is that a load-boring walk?

'Cause we went one of a much bigger kitchen and how big were the corn cobs? - Yes. (laughs) - That's the stuff I want to know. I didn't know about this piece of Pasadena lore.

- Yeah.

“- So do you know a lot of creepy things about Pasadena?”

- Well, you should give a creepo tour. - Yeah. - Where you get a bus and you saw off the roof and you drive around? - Yeah.

- Well, there's also that famous lamb family mortuary where they were something famous when it's stuff nobody knows. (laughs) That looks documentary that just came out about it.

- I don't do a documentary on anything. - I don't know. - What is the lamb family mortuary? - Oh, they were scamming people. - Over cremating people and just throwing their ashes

around and stuff like that. - Well, what were they doing? What were they doing? What were they doing? - They were combining people in the crematorium

and then not really giving people the real, the real ashes of that. - And taking their valuables and stuff like that. - Yeah. - And their house is right on Orange Grove

which is also where another house was where Jack Parsons blew up his garage doing a rocket test and everything. But there's this green and green mansion from season two, a true detective.

- And so should I watch season two of chief detective? - I'm gonna wait and see the mansion at some point. - Well, well, it's this gorgeous, gorgeous house. I want it and so when a man and I are getting married,

we were curious we could rent this place. - Yeah. - And then I wanted the invitation to say, Mr. and Mrs. Amanda Lund, cordially invited you to the wedding of their daughter,

Amanda to Matthew Gorley, at the Pasadena Fuck Mansion from season two, a true detective. (laughing) - That, you know what? - I was very dubious about where you were going

and you took control of his podcast. And you did, the wings came off. We lost a lot of passengers. - Yeah. - I'm horribly burnt now.

- Yeah. - But then you made a nice landing. - I saw it. - Yeah, you saw it. - I was able to look at like the Mars rover

the same way again. 'Cause like Jack Parsons was a nutball. - He was a genius nutball. - I didn't know that. - I'm sure that we're educating people property.

You're talking about, say the name again. - Jack Parsons, who were Jack Parsons, who invented JPL, the big JetPromotion Lab. - You're also with the building and the building is named after?

- Yeah. - And so you're saying that he had some, he was a crazy guy in eccentric guy and he was into erotic adventures. Is that what you're saying?

- Yeah. - And he was bros with like El Ron and with the Fuck Crowley, Fuck and Crowley. - Yeah, holster Crowley. - holster Crowley, holster.

- No one named their kids Alistair. - He looked at me at me. - He looked at me at me. - If I were to have a boy. - It's a cool name.

“- I believe Alistair Crowley was a big influence on Jimmy Page.”

What's up? - Yeah, he's on Sergeant Pepper's cover too. One of the heads is Alistair Crowley, I believe. - Wow. - Okay, turn off and the dirt.

Are you guys gonna try it? - What's that? - Are you gonna try it? - Are you going to try it? - Try it, try it.

- What do you talk about?

- He's on the path. - He's talking about, there's not a square inch of my yard. (laughing) - Oh, y'all. - Ew.

- Well, I'm sorry, but you know what? It's good for the grass. - He's it.

- People come, my gardener is always like,

"How do you do it, Mr. Brian?" And I said, "Now, what I didn't realize." (laughing) What I didn't realize is we have a security camera back. - Oh, wow.

- Oh, yeah. - Do you have a crew? - What's that?

“- Do you have like a couple of pals that come with you?”

- Yeah, who's my, what's my backpack, my crew? - What's your dirt jerk? - No, no, no, no. No, no, sometimes they rent me out of golf courses to put new holes in it.

- Oh, okay, we're gonna take a break. - Oh god. - What's that? - You mean, and the show, and I mean, fully and completely. - When I say take a break, I mean,

let's just stop talking. - This is awful, and you did this. - Oh, wow. - Adam did he do this? - He did, yeah.

- Yeah, I did. - I didn't do this for the first time, I didn't do this. - What did I do? I think what I brought in rich. It changed to a tenor.

- You have a couple of pals, and we started talking about him. - Yeah, yeah. - The idea when you have a, when you have a big podcast, like this, is to cast a wide net right everyone in. - Yes.

- You pretty much said, if you're into King Key Sex, and you love Pasadena lore, and you want to hear some names

you've never heard before, and some fun facts about someone

behind a jet propulsion laboratory, you narrowed it down. So I think the only person who's gonna happily listen to this is you. - Well, I do edit it, so I gotta put something in there for me. - If you make yourself happy, I guess today's most decorated

wrestler in WWE history has every award you can win. End outside of wrestling as well. - Oh, he's got a Nobel Peace Prize. - Oh, yeah. - He's got it all.

He's also has an impressive acting resume. You can see him in such films in TV series. His peacemaker, Barbie, and the suicide squad. Now you can see him in the new movie, "Coyote versus Acme." I've been waiting for this.

- I saw it, it's so fun. - Yeah, okay. Thrilled to talk to him today. John Cena, welcome. - You've done the show before, but this is a new experience for us.

- One on one, just trying to be here. Normally, it's like, hey, you have four minutes of break and three minutes, and a live audience to entertain. So it is a different conversation.

- Yes, I was in that world as you know for a long time.

I like this world because I really get to plumb the depths of someone's soul.

“And that's what we're gonna do right now.”

- I'm gonna fair play. (laughing) - John, I'm gonna start with quick lower-shark tests. (laughing) - My dad, my dad, my dad, my dad, my dad.

- Every plot is your dad. - I'm just showing you photographs of your dad. (laughing) John, I'm gonna tell you something. You and I, I think, are very similar in one way.

- We both came to listen to me, listen to me, not just physique, not just physique. We both came to a fork in the road, and we took very different paths. I've done some research on you.

I'm a fan. I know a lot about you. When you were 13 years old, you were bullied. And your response was to go and build up your body by lifting weights.

- Yes. - When I was 13, I was bullied. My response was to come my hair up into a pompadom. (laughing) - Essentially, we kind of did the same thing though.

(laughing) - You, we both appeared larger. (laughing) - Yes. - It's so crazy.

- So crazy. - We both, yes, we, and you actually physically made yourself more imposing and stronger. - So did you. - No, what I did was, you know,

those animals that are really scrawny and then wild, but they can go blue, yeah. - And they fill themselves up with hair, and people go, like, oh my god, I'm gonna back away from this, but it turns out they're just still

this little piece of shit animal. (laughing) - That's me. There's a piece of shit inside me. (laughing)

It's way to come out. I'm gonna give it another eight hours. There's one inside me too. (laughing) - We also are both from Massachusetts.

- Where are you from? - I'm from Brooklyn, Massachusetts. It's out of Boston. - Yes. - And you're from...

- Is it Newberry? - Where is West Newberry? - So, as you fall, the coastline north of Boston. - Yeah, it is literally one town in from Newberry, where we take a border town.

- Yeah. - And then you can walk into New Hampshire. - Now, it's funny because I'm from Massachusetts, but I don't know that I seem like a guy from Massachusetts. You don't seem like a guy.

“We don't have, did you ever have a strong Boston accent?”

- Yeah, I did. - When I look at old footage of me, I have a Boston accent, and I didn't even try to make it go away. - Did you try?

- That's how people talk. - Yeah. - There's any difference. - Right. - I'm from a small town. When I was there, the town population was 1200, maybe?

- Wow.

It's still the graduating classes, 200 kids. Like, it was small, no stoplights. And everyone just talk like that. - Yeah. - And then you get put in a pool of people

who have a very accents, and you realize, oh my God. I sound a certain way, and that might get misunderstood later on in life. - Yeah, yeah. - To dormitory school as a 15/16 year old,

and they kind of nudged me in the right direction of like, hey, you can also learn to speak it differently, if you'd like. So that's what it kind of was. - You'd like to get the cod out of your mouth.

(laughing) - Yeah. - I remember not even being a conscious choice. I think it was just erosion. - It's like-- - Oddly enough, though,

when I go back to Massachusetts, and my brother's and I hang out, I got four brothers were all still very close.

“We opened a few beers, and honestly get me around them,”

and like six beers deep, it comes back instantaneously. - Yeah. - And I can't shut it off. - Yeah.

- The first time my wife heard it, she's like,

"What the fuck happened?" (laughing) - I don't understand what they're saying. - I don't understand what you're saying. - This is not the man I'm hearing.

- Yeah. - And Mary, this guy from every other Ben Affleck movie. (laughing) You got at this great story, it's a classic story, if someone who feels insecure, feels is being bullied,

and why were you, first of all, why are you being bullied? Because you seem to me, I know why I was bullied, and anyone who meets me today or looks at any of my contents, like, I would bully that guy now.

You, I don't see it. What was it about you that-- - I was bullied because I did what you did. I put my hair up in like a high top fade. I really fell in love with it.

“Then rap music before it became hip hop.”

- Right. - In like, the mid '80s is kind of when rap became public and mainstreamed, like run the insane aerosmith and rap, and Roddy Dangerfield had a rap album, like, it was just very commercialized.

And with that became more exposure, television and all that stuff. - Yeah, it was a big thing on it. It broke through on M.C.D. and S.T.V. - Yeah, yeah, everybody wanted to-- - So in West Newbury, you know, 12, 13 years old,

and going through a stage of rebellion in my life. And this music definitely spoke to me. I certainly couldn't put myself in the shoes of the artists, but what I got from it was like the voice of rebellion. And I embraced it, like airbrushed overalls, MC Hammer pants.

I mean, and in my town, West Newbury is either 100% or 99.9 repeating all white. It's a farm town, it's a rock and roll town. It's four chords, A.C.D.C. and that's it. And there's nothing wrong with that.

But I was way different than everyone else. And I completely embraced, you know, I can't believe how many times I watched House Party and tried to emulate the tag team dance of kiddie play. - A dance I do every time Chris Hayes and I see each other.

- Yeah, that's true. - Chris Hayes and all our IT stuff, and he knows it cold, and whenever we see each other, we just start to do it. - What are you saying? You guys both know this tag team dance?

- No, I know. (laughing) - Look, it had a parking space for a while, it's gone. - Yeah, 'cause that's a real moment. And so if you tell me you know it,

“'cause that's what my hair up high, I was bullied.”

- Yeah, okay. - I just didn't look like everyone else. And it was an easy target, I was skinny and scrawny. I had grown in height but not in stature. - Sure.

- And I just hadn't filled out my frame yet, and I was an easy target. - So funny, I had I responded differently. Had I gone the John Cena route and hit the gym. I don't think muscles would have formed, I really don't.

It took me, and I'm not even doing a joke. I think when I was, you know, 13, 14, 15, you could have put me in a gym and I could have been lifting weights, but I had no testosterone at that point.

- I didn't get testosterone till, well, I like to say this,

but it's true, late in Obama's first term.

- So, and you had it important, too. - I didn't lead that foundation until then. - When you hit that. - Yeah, I'm fun. - I just don't know if that would have happened for me, but who was supervising you?

Who was telling you this is how you do the weights? This is- - Nobody, just figured it out. - Wow. - My grandfather convinced my dad to get me a weight bench for Christmas, and it was like one of those home-leader gyms

with every attachment to my dad's credit, he went in. (laughing) I self-assembled it, and as soon as I got it done, I just worked out, and it came with a little pamphlet to be like, these are the exercises

that this machine's capable of, and I just did the whole thing every day of like four sets of 12. So I used every possible combination on the machine every single day.

By the time I was age 15, I'd be going to fill out my frame, and that's when you go from junior high to high school, and like the football coaches like you,

come here, and that was the first time

I got sort of mentor in other ways of like, do this and do this, but I just looked at the Joe Weeder pamphlet and did all the exercises. - Wow, that's so cool. - Well, I'm in ball coach looked at me and said you come here,

(laughing)

There, we went out for three years.

(laughing) - So when you keep covering your face when you last, let those guys go, they're the mama's milk of this podcast. - I'm just, I'm embarrassed for you. - Oh, I think that's my problem.

- It's over relationship. (laughing) I love that man. - I love that man. - I love that man.

- I love that man. - I love that man. (upbeat music) - You come out to Los Angeles.

“- I think I came out here for the first time in 1985.”

I know I did. You came out here, and I don't know if you felt the same way, but when I came out here, it felt like I was going to the moon. - I came from Massachusetts. I go to Los Angeles and I had a really crappy car.

I didn't have any money and I was just. I think I would have felt exactly the same if you would drop me onto Mars and said, you have a very limited food supply. That's how strange it felt to me.

And you came out here, did you have a job when you came out? - No, but no end. I felt it was strange, but I felt it was strange. Like, this is Mars, and if you'd been like, you have three days of food, this is gonna be great.

(laughing) Attitude is everything. - Yeah, I made a choice to come out here.

Even my first trip, when I'd saved up some money

for my senior year of college spring break and everyone was gonna can't come to have fun. And at the time, I didn't drink, so I came to Los Angeles to check out places to do an internship.

“And as soon as I got off the plane, I'm like, man,”

I'm coming back here. I'm finding a way, and the rest is kind of just finding a way. - Yeah. - I know you worked at Gold's gym for a while, and I started at a warehouse assembling

and disassembling old fitness equipment, and I thought that would be a way to use my degree. I thought I'd end up getting into the sales branch. But I was so good in the warehouse that it kind of changed me there for life.

So I had to quit that. I worked security at bars, I worked at a place called Sharkies Over and Hermosa Beach. I was there like five days a week from happy hour to close. That allowed me to work out a golds during the day,

and then I actually got a job at golds. That was very advantageous because I had to switch living situations I had no place to live, so I just kind of lived in the parking lot

and shoured in the locker room, and then just worked all day, and then slept in my car. That was for a few months, and then I moved into a garage in Venice, and then again, I just got into wrestling by accident,

and now we're here. - Yeah. - And you made it. - Yeah. - It's simple.

- It's actually simple. - This is an interesting thing I've been thinking about, which is to me, it makes perfect sense that you would be in professional wrestling, and then be so adept at comedy,

because I think there's some,

I've always said there's a relationship

between comedy and musicians, and I think there's a relationship between comedians, and what really good wrestlers are doing in professional wrestling,

“which is you need to figure out who you are,”

and then you need to attack that 100% with an attitude, and there's all these disciplines that go beyond the actual physical part of it. Obviously you had the physical part of it, but I just look at, I was thinking about all the different

characters you inhabited as a wrestler, you keep coming up with new ways to come at this thing. And some of the, was it the professor of drug and drug and drug addiction. - The drug addiction.

- And when I hear a doctor of drug addiction, I'm like, that's great comedy writing. That's really good comedy writing, and that's a great comedy character, and the fact that you have to keep changing it up,

you can do something for a year or two, and then you have to switch it and come on at a different way. It's almost a really good school for comedy, if you approach it the right way. Do you think that's true?

- I think it's a great perspective, and you said good comedians and good professional wrestlers, I think comedy and live sports entertainment, professional wrestling run parallels. So bad stand-ups are in that phase of trying to find themselves,

so we're bad wrestlers, and they're working at shit clubs, and they're mostly like working for free, and they're losing money, but they are trying to hone their craft. All they need is reps,

and the ability to be coachable, a little bit of magic, but they do find themselves, and once comedians do find their voice, you know, they do, they attack it, and the ones who have stood a test of time as storytellers,

can't just lean on successful material. They have to continue to bring the personality, that the audience identifies with, but in a new presentation. - Yeah. - And we in sports entertainment

have to do the same thing after 23 years of tenure there, and now this is my sports entertainment uniform, because I need to let the audience know,

he's gonna do something physical,

“because I'm the first wrestler ever to retire,”

and I said I'm not going back to falling down, and I'm just not, it's not conducive to the goals I've set for myself. - We were gonna hit you with an orange crate. - That's here, that's here. (laughing)

- And why are you ready with the crate? - Yeah, okay, just, but again, I'm kind of still doing that. I'm still curating what the person's out.

- It's never over, it's over when you walk away from it.

You know, so as long as I'm still involved, and I'm, you know, WWE's my family on, never leave until they throw me out. So I have to continue to evolve, and in doing that, my first rule

is don't confuse the consumer, show up in a different outfits, they know you're not getting your hands dirty. And now I'm far more of a promoter in us. - Sure, sure.

- So the, I guess what I was obviously seeing you over the years and in preparation for this talk, I was looking at a lot of your iconic performances in the ring. And what I see is 100% commitment to whatever you're doing. You go in there, and there is no fucking around,

and there's no laps, there's not a moment where you drop, who it is that you want to be out there. That's really impressive, and that's really hard to do. Because you're coming in as an athlete and doing this really incredible,

these incredible moves and displaying these great gifts in your physicality, but also just you, as this persona, you don't drop it for a second. It is life or death, and then to me, it's perfectly natural that you've had all this success

in film and television, you're just because that is 90% of the game is going in with that kind of, this is life or death. I'm gonna commit to this.

“- I did, I think that's also a good perspective.”

And I agree, I learned that the hard way, I thought just doing moves was important, and I lost my job, and then they were like, "Oh, you can rap, would you mind being a character on TV?" That's right, well, they fuck, yes, I can.

And that's when it was like, you could-- - Did someone hear you were like, "I'm here by accident." - Well, all of us are here by accident, except for Gourli, who seems to know what he's doing. But, what am I doing?

- Oh, I don't know, I mean, what am I doing here? - Well, yeah, I don't know what you're doing here,

but no, I've always heard the story that they're like,

"Yeah, okay, maybe that's over for this guy. We get rid of him." - Well, it wasn't maybe that's over. It was like, "Hey, we're doing December cuts "and your names on the list." - Okay.

- They used to at least, back when I broke into the business around 2000-2001, they would make cuts in every April and every December, but there would also be a list of people in the bubble, so at least they would make you aware

“of, like, and I think that was to light a fire under,”

like, three months, showed me something kid, but I had nothing, and I had little understanding of how I could find myself, but because I had nothing, I had nothing to lose, and I went into a professional environment with the advice of my whole year's open,

which was great, I learned a lot, but I never spoke up for myself. - Yeah. - When I knew the ship was syncing, and the guys were wrapping the back, and I was like, "Fuck this, I'm just going back there."

And the head of creative happened to be sitting in the front of the bus, and they were like, "Can you, can you? - I don't know, TV." I said, "I sure can." (laughing)

And it wasn't like, the kids of Star, they started putting me in forgettable matches, other Saturday night broadcast that aired on nowhere, but in a 100% commitment, I was like, called myself Mr. Saturday night,

the show is my show, you give me an inch, I'm gonna take a mile, but it was just the direction of, "Hey, you're the white kid from West Newberry, who's the rapper?" - Yeah. - I get that, I can work with that.

Let's go armor. - The idea to only wear cutoff jeans. - Yeah. - That to me, that to me, anyone, if you told me that, ahead of time, like, here's my thing,

I wear cutoff jeans in the ring, I be like, "That's terrible." That's absolutely terrible. - Believe it or not, that was a process in itself. I was wearing everything, I was wearing like yellow,

quarter-roids, I wear blue sheepskin pants, I was really leaning into like urban wear. I would literally, you know, one--

- I never wrestled in a quarter, right?

That is a deal breaker. - We'll remove one audience member at a time, and I would literally go to the citywear and shop in the hood for my gear that night. And while I'm paying, I'm like, "Yo, I'm gonna wear this tonight

and the jersey I'm gonna throw out to the crowd." People are like, "Oh, man, I'm gonna check that out." But just the fact that I'm going to these places, you know, for all the media, I would freestyle, everybody had freestyle kids in the park

and thought, "I have an album for God's sake." Like, I went in, I went in, and the jean shorts became an necessity because that was kind of the style in '04,

but an evolution of the character

outside of rapping like the next chapter of this patriotic aspirational figure that it miars members of service. All core values of them, just like hip hop and rap music.

It's just one lane. The transition became, "What is the material like and wear and wrestling that what my crotch won't split?" (laughter) And denim, time over time.

- I see you're working backwards from something else. - Time over time, denim stands up to any test. I've worn like regular cargo shorts and I've blown my crotch open of it.

“- So I blow my crotch open, I think, once a week.”

- Short shorts. - Yeah, shorts just were more durable. And they also fit the evolution of the character. So that was the thing that could kind of like, you know, they started going above Nehaite

and by the time I finished, it was like the John Stockton shorts. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Do you look really close? You could see everything that was going on.

(laughter)

But I knew they would never tear.

- It's fun to, I mean, I love the best part of any story is the beginning to me because you understand that you like, the Beatles is an example. It's still interesting later on,

but nothing's more fascinating than when they're figuring this out in Hamburg, Germany. That's always the most emphasinating part to me. How do these people come together? What are they doing in Germany?

They're not supposed to be there and how do they become these guys? And understanding, you know, a million things went into you getting from North Shore, Massachusetts, to being in the ring, wearing shorts.

- Yeah, exactly.

“All it wishes that you sold shorts on TV”

and you always open with tired of your crotch, blowing open. (laughter) - That would be such a great ad, you know? Are you tired of your crotch?

And then just a series of shots of crotch is just exploding. (laughter) Like they put a grenade in a mannequin. (laughter) So we're a mannequin's dick should be and it just explodes.

And then you're like, "I've got just the fence for you." Hi, I'm John Cena. I mean, I'm sure you're doing well now, but you'd be a billionaire. - If I could've sold shorts like that,

to prevent crotch's from growing up. - You start to make this transition into film, and you have this interesting story, which is true for so many people, but your first foray is not a commercial success.

- No, no. - And... - And neither is the next one, or the next one, or the next one. - Certain people, Judd Appetal, Tina Fey,

they're like... - Amy Schumer. - Amy Schumer. Like, no, no, no, there's something good here. And we're gonna stick with this,

we're gonna work with this guy. And you start working in these, and doing a really good job in these great movies. - I appreciate that.

So you would say like a million things

have to happen to get from the North Shore to wearing shorts. - 900,000 of those aren't strictly me. Like, it's all a collective work. - Yeah. - Yeah.

- What can I control? And what can I learn from my experiences? The reason those movies, or the reason I can control that those movies sucked, I wasn't wholeheartedly invested, right?

- I wanted to be in the ring. - Yeah. - Because as a 27-year-old, spending $15 a day to watch one thing blow up in a library quiet set is not near as cool as being in an arena in Lexington

with 22,000 people going to ape shit to be like, "This is a fucking mess!" They're gonna see them in my life. And then you drive to the next town and do it again.

And then you want it to be there. My focus was elsewhere.

“And again, I think I've had at least a bit of control”

over knowing when something is happening. Like, do you wanna rap? I do. It's gonna be ridiculous. I'll do it.

Like, I'll be ridiculous. And instead of putting roadblocks. - Yeah. By the time I auditioned for train wreck, I was like, "Hey, you've already been run out

"of the movie business once." And you're also doing okay. You have other things going on. I was hosting the today shows, reading the news, doing live programming, I was having fun.

So if you're gonna get back into this, I just told myself, put the same amount of passion you do in wrestling into this. - Yeah. - And at the very least, you won't regret your choices.

And that's exactly what I did in that audition. I'm sitting with very funny people. I have no business being there. But I didn't give a fuck and just let it go. And realize that I was the joke in many cases.

So I didn't put the roadblock in front of myself. - Yeah. - I can't laugh at myself 'cause I'm cool and fuck that. Like, let's go, let's make the funniest, coolest thing. And being on set in New York,

man, Judd called Tina was filming just up the road. I'm like, "Hey, I'm done with John. "If you have a small part form, which they did, they needed a drug dealer." And they were like, "Yeah, sure, it's not gonna sink the movie.

"If you suck, sure, we'll give him a chance." And then I got within a small period. I got to work with and watch very funny people,

It was like how I learned from my mentors and wrestling.

Like the people when I started my character and got some speed, the experienced folks that I got to work with every night was like fucking college. And just those instances, I got to go from Judd and Amy and everybody they brought in to Paul Appell, Amy Polar,

Tina Fey and everybody they brought in. And then like Will Farrell and his whole crew with Mark Wahlberg, it was just a storm of very funny, very successful comedians. I got to work with Seth Rogan's group.

Like every single time, I wasn't the smartest guy in the room and all these smart people were like, we want you to be funny because if your funny, it helps us. - Yeah. - So I was also in an environment where it was okay to fail.

They're only gonna show the funny stuff. Don't be afraid to tell the joke, the bombs 'cause it doesn't fucking matter. Like I really got nurtured. And combine that with, hey, don't fuck this up this time.

Go wholeheartedly, like being it, know that every day is gonna be 14 hours and don't complain to try to get it done faster. Just show up and go. And that's been a system that's,

it worked in wrestling and I look back in those decisions about what the fuck was I doing. But I'm just so grateful that I did get another chance. And I didn't hold out for like, I have to be the star. No, I'll be a fucking mermaid, I don't care.

Like, it's a chance to be creative and do something. - I'm holding out for a mermaid. (laughing) Again, putting a door in front of a window. - Yeah. - See the opportunity.

I'm not saying say yes to everything 'cause, you know, it's impossible to do that. But a lot of times, we might have something going or there might be potential there and the biggest obstacle is self-sabotage.

- Yeah. - So I just try to minimize self-sabotage. - I get the impression talking to you that you've done a lot of work, meaning you've read a lot about strategies, you think a lot about strategies to succeed, you've done a lot of work.

I don't know if it's a self-help book or something, but I get that impression that you take,

“you are very honest with yourself about what could I have done better?”

- Yeah. - How could I, and not a lot of people are. A lot of people, you know, it takes a lot of discipline to constantly look at yourself and say, okay, I'm doing well, this one okay,

but how could it have gone better? That takes a methodology that you had when you were 13 years old and you decided I'm gonna lift weights every day and read this booklet. It's all the same thing over and over and over again.

That's the part that I respond to viscerally when I'm talking to you is I know that I screwed up

a million times in a million different ways,

but my methodology when I was 13 was, well, I would like to be better than I am. - Today? - So I'd like to take this, yeah, a little bit of thing that interests me that I think I have some ability in

and I want to see how far I can push it. And then here I am, all these decades and decades later and I'm still doing the same thing, it's just, it's not that romantic or cool, it's just this, I'm gonna go back at it again today.

“- And I think that's what is romantic and cool.”

So I'm gonna lean into those two words. - Yeah, yeah, romantic and cool. New romance, that's, you know, passionate and fiery. What really tugs at my heartstrings is when I see a 50th anniversary.

- Yeah. - And that's beautiful. When I see an old couple walking hand in hand, that's romance, that's cool, you know what that takes? The same fucking thing every day.

And it's not easy, there's sensitivities, you fucking brush your teeth too loud or there's so much to coalesce this thing here. You know, that's what's going to do with somebody. - Yeah.

- To build a team to be successful for that long. - Yeah. - That's romance. - That's cool. - What's interesting is that we're in this immediate satisfaction

culture and when you talk about these things like, no, you gotta, you gotta commit to this over this many decades. You can see people's eyes kind of like this.

- So first of all, yeah, because we live in a culture

where, wow, that looks cool. Amazon will bring it to you by 5 p.m. today. - You know what I need by one. - Yeah. - God damn it.

- Amazon's 505, you're in front of your house. - Why have I been lying to? - My life sucks.

“- I think that's what helped with physical fitness.”

- Yeah. - I didn't blow up the second I did all those exercises. - Right. - North three months later, nor a year later, nor two years later.

- Yeah. - Like, it was a very long term thing. And right is in that adaptable period where you're learning about life and self, I found that like, oh, nothing is gained tomorrow.

It's trench warfare. It's an inch at a time and eventually the inches make a mile. - Yeah. - And I kind of use that as a template of like, oh, man, I mess around with piano.

not as a skill to show, it's a hobby. It's like my, a safe space for me. - I'll hear.

“- Is that something you ever interested in, even as a kid?”

- Or is it something you came much later? - I wanted to play music so bad as a young kid. And I look at my hands and I'm like, oh, I try to pick up a guitar. I have like a crush.

- I have a catcher's name with small sausages. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So it was very easy. - He's like, it's like Hulk, Hulk wanna play Obo.

- Crack. - Hulk's sad. - Yeah, it was just easy for me to say, I'm not built for this. - Yeah, yeah.

- And for the longest time I did that. And on my 40th birthday, I'm like, fuck it. You're gonna learn music. You're just gonna learn. So I got a shitty keyboard and just started

mashing keys and I did mashing keys. And I was like, man, I'll be good at this in five years. And in five years, I was better than I was in a mashing keys, but compared to someone who's a musician, I still sucked.

I've been playing for almost 10 years. - Yeah. - And I'm better than I was yesterday, but I still sucked. - What kind of stuff do you like to play? - I'm right now, man, I wanna just play jazz.

I wanna sit down with a scotch and just jazz it up. Like that's my goal. And I know I'll be there in five years. - Wow, so cool. - So like, that's, I'm just learning like,

fundamental 12 bar blues, cocktail jazz and stuff like that. And I try to put in an hour a day and I know like fluency takes eight hours a day or four hours a day. I don't have that, some on my own speed. But because it doesn't sound right right now,

I don't care. I'm like, hey, what's it gonna sound like in 2035? And if I'm not there, then I gotta pivot. And each year, I kinda take an assessment of, all right, I'm not where I want to be,

but dude, you didn't know how to play this last year. - Yeah. - And I'll work on a piece for a year. Or I'll work on fundamentals. It's just the same dinner, dinner, dinner for a fucking year,

18 months. My wife's like, are you gonna learn something new? (laughing)

“- But you're like, are you trying to brush your teeth a little more?”

(laughing) - Five or five words, my name was on the back. (laughing) Do you just think, 'cause I have a similar thing with guitar. I don't think I'm a natural musician,

but I was just really interested in it and went and got a guitar when I first came out to LA, and got a booklet, you know, like you did with the weights, and sat in my, I didn't have a girlfriend when I first came out to LA,

so I just sat in my room and played, forced myself to do these scales and try chords, and I know that if I sit with musicians, they're like, oh, he's a comedian, but I also know that I just enjoy it.

It's something else to me. - Like you also don't,

I was never gonna be Mr. Olympia.

I lifted weights like it was my job. You never gonna be Mr. Olympia. I committed to football as if it was the last thing I'd ever do. I played division three football. I was never going farther than that,

and I was never gonna play football in front of more than maybe 1,500 people. - Right. - I started wrestling not because I knew I would make it, because it was a way to justify standing in California

and proving my dad right that I could make it. Working my shitty job as long as they gave me the weekends off, and I would dress up as a fucking superhero, and do kind of be athletic to justify like, why do you spend so much time with the gym?

- 'Cause I'm a wrestler, and it works, and that's fine. Like I never, yeah, it's okay to have something, you don't have to be a gold medalist. - Yep. - You might still like to go out for a run.

- You know what I'm saying? - Yeah. - Like piano for me is that's for me. It's not for somebody to be like, "Oh, you can't play."

- Yeah, I can't play like you,

“but you should have seen me when I started.”

I fucking couldn't play, and now I have you kind of play. So that's all I can't play like you, but I can rip your head off. (laughing) - It's the loneliest monk.

(laughing) - I just go to jazz clubs and beat, I love you go to different jazz clubs

and beat the shit of all these old amazing players.

- You can't do this, can you? - John Cena Kill, the Levin, just greats today, and a bit of work. - Yeah. - It's weird now, I also am very grateful for what I grew up

because I don't think I would have had the perseverance. Like when I grew up, you'd look at a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a magazine or you might be able to, if you're an aspiring musician,

get a dubbed tape of some like live performance. Now you go on your phone and you see the 1% of everything. And there are so many, let's say you're into lifting weights, right? And you want to be Mr. Olympia.

Eight billion people in the world, this probably, you know, I'm making low estimation. 100 million people that train dedicated every day that I've profiled to post shit, you're gonna be flooded with people

who you know, if I work the fucking hardest I can,

I'm never gonna look like that.

I'll be the best me, but that shit's out of reach. I think if I, if I was 13 now,

- Yeah, man, I remember when I was young

and I saw him like my first core vet.

I was like, man, that's fucking aspirational. Now, it's just super cars everywhere. It's like, how the fuck am I ever gonna get a $12 million car? 'Cause that seems to be what everybody's driving,

but it's not. It's sort of small percentage of people driving, but you're flooded with all this information of, you know, if you're not like this, don't even fucking try.

- Don't try. - And that's difficult, and I really have a lot of empathy for young folks out there, and that made a short attention span all that, but even being flooded with that information,

might really stop people from like, I'm just gonna fail anyway.

“- That's why you need to block some of the apps sometimes”

and just get into your garage and work on what you're gonna work on. - That's also like saying, like, hey, yeah, stop doing crack and hanging out like it's so addictive, you know, blocking the apps is so easy to say.

How does he be on a phone list? That's easy fix, dude, it's addictive, you know? - No, I know, it's just tough, it's tough, you know? So again, I don't know, I'm just very grateful for the time of life I grew up in,

and the fact that everything is gone the way it's gone, but I just think it was like, I didn't know any better. - Yeah. - So even when it came to telling jokes, I didn't know any better.

I knew I was sitting with, you know, comedians and important people in that field, but I didn't overthink it. And I didn't know that, like, if I tell a shitty joke, I'm gonna feel less than, I just got in and wet.

- Listen, it's interesting too, like, I'm a fan of peacemaker, you know? I think you're really funny, it's a really funny character. I think that's a great role for you. And one of the things that makes it work

is you're not telling jokes. You're just, you're seeing everything with complete sincerity and your very earnest, and your character's outrageous, you know? He's, he's the total asshole.

He's going, you know, he's got a cruel neighborhood for everyone.

Yeah, he's self-absorbed, he doesn't always,

he doesn't see himself properly. So what your approach to it is, you could be Lawrence Olivier.

“What you're saying is very important to you,”

and it's real, it just happens to be completely wrong headed and insane. But it's what, it's what makes it so funny, you know, that a lot of being funny is not saying a joke. People because I've been comedy for so long,

sometimes older people or younger people never say this, but older people are like, oh yeah, I am that funny guy. Tell me a joke, I'm like, I don't know a joke. I've never said a joke in my life, and when I do hear a funny joke,

I can't remember it from more than five minutes. But it's about committing to something absolutely absurd with incredible intensity. You do that so well. Or all storytellers. - Yeah.

- And again, that's just something from wrestling. - Yeah. - Don't drop the act. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Because if you do, people notice. And I got to see it every night,

like I did the Beatles thing. I performed five nights a week for 23 years. Non-stop, but we don't have it off season. We don't stop ever. So like, I had my time in Germany,

and by the time I got to my Ed Sullivan show, trying to play different characters,

other than John, oh, you just never break the bit.

- Yeah. - And swing big, go for it. - Yeah. - And that's what you're doing. And I want to make sure I get to, because we were talking to Eric Andre. We were talking about your new project together.

- By the way, tremendously talented too. He's got so much talent in skill that he kind of keeps for him. - Yeah. - He's a really... - Well, this is interesting, too.

I'm really curious. - He's a jazz guy. Do you guys ever have you ever played together? - So, that I don't want to have my dreams crushed. Because he is very good. - Yeah. - Well, he's Berkeley School of Music.

- He is very good. - Upright, bass playing. - Yeah. - So, like, multi- instrumentalist. - Yeah. - Like, man, you know, you're all in the place. What are you doing? He's like, after this, I'm rapping.

I'm going to Budapest to do some classical jazz album. We're going to score it and everything like, "Yeah, yeah." - Wait, what? - I want to come, too. I'll bring my piano.

- It's just one of those things that, like, in everybody's got a story, you know, we know nothing about. And to hear his, and he does it, it's pure passion for him. He's not, he's not trying to blow it out of the water. He just wants to be around good musicians.

He wants to compose, he wants to create, you know, he's known to me and I think a lot of the people who know him for outrageous, physical comedy and commitment to concept.

“And that's why I love Eric and I was so happy to work with him”

and allow a project that I thought was written for him without rage, just physical comedy and commitment to concept. And in learning who he is, man, he's a real, he's a talent director. - Yeah.

- He's got so much stuff going on. - He knows, it's one of the things is knowing how you're funny. And Eric knows, I could just see him knowing exactly this is how I'm funny in this situation. What makes Little Brother, I think the core of it

is you two are a funny comedy duo because you present as so different.

is incredibly uptight.

- And then again, committing to the bit,

I got this guy going crazy around me, right? - But you're supposed to be type-in. - Yeah, and you're not laughing, you're not thinking it's funny, you're not winking at the camera, you're incredibly irritated by the fact that Eric Andre has shown up in your life.

- And this is wreaking havoc. - It's wreaking havoc and you are trying to hold it all together. - Yeah. (upbeat music) The thing I wanted to mention that I got to see last night,

coyote Vacme, which is something I've been waiting for. Because it's such a funny, and they gave me a chance to watch it. And I was thinking, okay, it's such a funny idea. And I'm a fan of yours, and I love Will Fortae.

“I think this is, I like all the ingredients,”

but are they going to do this correctly? And the nice surprise for me was, yes, they did it correctly. - Yeah, it's really funny.

It's really funny, and you're, of course, the head lawyer,

head chief counsel for Acme, which is really funny. And the coyotes really good, Fortae's great, and they did a really nice job of blending that sort of classic Warner Brothers animation with real-life characters and having them all come together.

- I did green, and that's all for him, like that, it's one-and-lost in prep when you do, when essentially you're acting with a tennis ball. - Yep. - It is one-and-lost in the prep.

And I've done a lot of digital stuff before. Dave had so much realism on set to allow us to get lost. So we don't drop the bits, so we're not winking at the camera, 'cause he's just a tennis ball.

Man, he really directed his ass off for that thing in his shows. I'm very glad that his movie is gonna be seen by people, 'cause, man, I would love to get him another chance

to do some of this amazing story,

because I remember being very excited about this movie. And then hearing that, Warner Brothers isn't gonna release it for tax purposes. You know, like, wait, what? And they were gonna take a loss

because they do that now, the business has changed, and sometimes they think they can make more money if they write it off as a business expense, and you're like, wait a minute. No, I wanna see this movie,

and what's nice is that there was this explosion online if people saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can do this with a lot of crappy movies. You can't do that with this movie. We wanna see it, and so that won the day,

and the movie's coming out, and I just watched it, and I really loved it. - I appreciate you saying that, thank you. And I guess, you know, when we do creative work, it's for an audience.

Very few things we do creatively. I mean, I'm not saying, no, I play piano for me, but like very few things, it's for an audience. - Yeah, it's a story tells the entertain, especially when you have that many people involved.

I completely understand someone who pays for the thing, getting the thing and be like, I just wanna put it over here. And even though I'm upset, I didn't pay for the thing. You did, it's yours.

- It is technically yours, you have been compensated. Everybody's been fairly compensated.

“The only thing we're missing is the approval or disapproval”

of the loud voices out there. So if you buy it, and you're like, "Well, I'm just gonna put it in a baggie." I'm a car guy. There are some car guys who just buy nice stuff

and put it in the bag and they'll drive it. I think everything should hit the road and be out there 'cause that's just my philosophy. - Yeah, I'm not way about instruments. A lot of times people say, "Oh, man, this guitar is really great,

but I ain't just gonna keep it in its storage 'cause it's really worth a lot of money." It's like, no, guitar is after me. - I think you're out there play it, you know? So I, but that's only my perspective.

I respect somebody who's like, it serves us better here as long as everyone's fairly taken care. They don't pay anybody or like they tanked it or whatever that's the different story. And then even when it got a chance,

the fans voice their opinion of, I want to see it. It's thought it'd go through a lot of loopholes. It had to get purchased to be seen.

“So you have to have another company be like,”

"It's worth the risk." And not a cheap buy-in for another place. - Yeah. - So the people who bought it originally get their money's worth and the people who inherit it

now can hopefully give something that the audience enjoys. - You mentioned your car guy, what do you go to, cars? What do you hear? - Man, I love everything. I'm not as eclectic as like Leno,

but I mean, I love, I grew up off American muscle. So that's the stuff I saw as a-- - What is your iconic American muscle car? - 1970, Pontiac GTO, the judge package. Like I think that is the toughest looking car period.

And the thing is they're all the same. Like GMA bodies, I believe, like the Chival,

they're all the same.

“It's just, they did a little bit of things different”

for some reason that mixture of the 70s psychedelics and the stupid colors and all these striping is Pontiac just got it right, man. I think that's-- - Do you have, do you have many of those then?

- No, no, I had a phase where I had those cars and drove them, they're rewarding, but they're also like enormous. I would also put the Plymouth Super Bird, the one with the nose and the huge wing.

- Yes, yes, yes. - The judge's kick around car, before you got his awesome car at the end, I think that's a nice thing 'cause like racing was so big and you had to sell a certain amount of them and the dealers

to be able to race them on Sundays. So they actually sold these cars and that's a pretty cool connection. I like, like, first of all, the Honda man and my daily driver is a Honda Civic type R

and I beat the shit out of that thing. I love that car, like it's, it is the best of all worlds. - Would you beat the shit of it? You'd just attack it with a bat or you'd drive it rough. - I think that's it with you, I don't know.

- No, I drive it like I'm testing it to withstand anything. - Yeah, great, great. - It's a manual shift car. It's a truck. - I love that.

- True Ford or it's got just enough horsepower. It's like 330 horsepower, so it's not one of those thousand horsepower deals where if you do match your foot, you get thrown back so far, you can't steer.

Like you're always on it, the interface is great.

It's got everything that I want in a ride. But I end, I also like a lot of the whole British stuff for the reason of-- - You just have to maintain it. - Yeah, it's just sure they all break.

- Yeah. - But that's the fun part. That's also kind of the fun part of like-- - I never got that being the fun part. When a car doesn't start, I just lose it.

- Yeah. - And I'm murdering people. - But if you're essentially driving for another reason

“to get to point 80 points, that's why I love the Honda,”

'cause I know when I put the keys in that, I don't care where I'm going, and I don't care if I shift everything at 65 on an RPM, I'm going to get to my destination. - Yeah.

- That's why I love that car. The other stuff leaks, breaks, and it's tough to get parts, tough to find a skill mechanic. But I like it because it looks sleek, they're very small, and you're not going at a death-defying speed

when you're ripping through the gears. And all the Austin Heal you can club through the gears and you're third going to fourth, and you're like, man, this is great, I'm going 40 miles an hour. - Okay, I'm not so safe.

- This is gonna be fantastic. (laughing) - But it's like someone shouting in a car, I'm also safe. - Well, there's no, there's no fun of that, you know?

So it's to me that experience of, I love to drive. And I don't want to track drive, although it's the same experience you're on the track.

I never listen to the radio, I look at the car

like a pilot of like an old prop plane. I'm always clocking the gauges, my review mirror, I'm trying to listen into the motor, my wife thinks I'm nuts. It's literally like we have permission to jam out

on some of the cars that have audio systems. She's like, can I connect? Yeah, go ahead, go for it, I'm okay. But there are sometimes she knows it like, "Oh, man, you just need to listen to the thing."

Okay, it's all right, I'll be over here. You just do your thing, and I'll be over here. - I'll be over here. - I'll be over here miserable. - Yeah.

- I'm gonna brush my teeth and take, there you go. There you go, my man, right there. I just love that experience of being connected. To take it back to the old muscle cars. There's so big and wobbly.

Sometimes you lose a little bit of that connection. - Yeah. - But like, man, I just love stuff that you're, that you're on. - I was just in, we were shooting something,

and Sonan was there too. We were in Morocco, we were at the foothills of the Sahara, and we were driving around in this.

“I think it was not a land rover, it was a land rover.”

- It wasn't a land rover. It was a land rover, but it was manual, and I realized how much I miss manual, because I used to have, I still haven't actually, but it needs to get fixed up a Ford Tourist S.A. show.

- Oh, yeah, it's on a lot of V6. - Thank you. - Yeah. - Thank you. - Is it British racing green?

- Yes, it's British racing green, it's the wolfing. - You know what, people have been laughing at me, and I finally met the guy who's giving me fucking respect. - The car fucks, that thing was awesome. - Yes, my God.

- Do your kind play dance, come on. - Yeah, I do. - Yeah, I do. - Tap, tap. - The, the, so that car, I had it for years,

and I would always talk about it on the show,

and it became this thing that all my fans knew that I have a Ford Tourist, a 1992 Ford Tourist S.A. show, and with the Yamaha engine. - Tam other interior. - Yeah, yeah. - Wow. - Wow.

- But, Dammit, I wanna marry you. (laughing) Anyway, we left, we left it at Warner Brothers, and they still don't know, we like hit it in a parking garage. It's covered in dust.

And recently, we heard from Ford that they might rehab it for me, 'cause it is beat to shit. It doesn't even run. But I wanna get that thing rehabbed, and I wanna tool around in my, in my,

- That's it.

- But I miss, I miss shifting,

and I wanna get that back in the house. - Keeps you off the phone, if you worried about driving me the phone, having to work both your feet and your hands, like, right, it's like we're at right in a motorcycle.

- I also fondle myself while driving this. - Oh, man, that's awesome. - Oh, man, that's awesome. - And can't do that much. - I know, I can't. - You can, you're gonna quit. (laughing)

- I'll be like, just get in the car. (laughing) (laughing) - I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. - I just heard you, from Ford, I'm there out. - I'm waiting for it. - Oh, Ford's out.

- Ford's out. - Ford's out. - I got Dammit's call. - All right, I've kept you. - But shut me's in. (laughing) (laughing) - I feel new Chevy masturbator. (laughing)

- Um, I think I'll do-- - I think I'll do-- - Calvin vissing on it, but no string. - Yeah, exactly. (laughing) - Okay, take it easy. - It's all settled down, and I apologize to all car companies

everywhere. - Hello. - Hello. - I've kept you too long, but it's because I just love talking to you, your fantastic, coyote, V-acme is dropping,

“and it's really funny. - Oh, you have to check it out.”

- It's a theater movie, something to go see in big screens. - Yeah, and you know what, it looks great. It looks great, it's really fun, and also I grew up on those roadrunner cartoons, and I love all the callbacks to the classic moments in those cartoons.

So, very cool, and I'm just, I'm very happy for you, because you seem like a really good guy who just keeps applying himself and doing the work, and it's leading

all these amazing things.

And I hope that I'm just gonna just keep happening for you. - So, I like your vision of prediction. I realize that it won't, and I think that allows me to invest wholeheartedly in these moments. - Yeah, anyway, then reason, you will die, of course.

(laughing) - And this is how we end all podcasts now. - Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. - By the way, gas, you will die. - Also, there's a high likelihood that before that, the town stops calling.

- Yes. - And like, we all know that. - It's weird though, and I'm just gonna take some more time, fuck it, 'cause I'm having a great time. - Okay. - You get into this thing, and you're awarded a few opportunities,

and you think it'll last forever.

“I think it's really important to lean into the fact”

that it doesn't, and it makes me sit in here with you extra special. - Oh, God damn, I'm sitting here with you. Like this is fantastic. We get to talk, who would ever thought we'd been talking

about a four-day S.H.O. tours? Like, that's the way, that was kind of how you ended up playing. (laughing) But like, maybe it doesn't continue. - Yeah. - And I think the way to look back on it,

and we'd spoke off camera and you came in, you're like, "Man, I do this 'cause I love it." - Yeah. - And in a nutshell, you were like, "Because I love it, that doesn't mean it's easy, "which I, there's a whole another podcast there."

- Right. - But man, this is gonna end. And all like opportunities are beyond my control. I'm not a studio head, I don't green light movies. I don't know what the future holds.

Like, I don't know what's gonna happen. So, when I get a chance to talk to you, I'm gonna pump it a few minutes, because this is fucking great, and I don't know what it is. - But I think that's refreshing to hear,

“because I think about that all the time.”

- You didn't see it. - I've had a lot, I've had a lot of nice things happen in my career, and I've had some low times, I've had some high times, and I'm very aware, I built a life where, you know, without getting to sentimental, but I love my kids.

I really like my friends. There's a bunch of things that I'm interested in doing, and getting involved in.

So, I always have this reserve idea in the back of my brain,

which is, they can take all this stuff away. And I don't even know who they are anymore. But I can all go away, and I think I still have a lot of fun. - And then you feel bulletproof. - And that's the most important thing.

I just retired from in-ring performance last year, and everybody was like, are you gonna be okay? In many interviews, I was like, that was her athlete's diet twice. I never just labeled myself the pro wrestler.

There might have been a period in the beginning of that windfall, but I'm more than that. And when it gets taken away, it doesn't take all of me with it. I love doing this. - Also, you still have that.

You'll always have, I mean, there's huge tracks of the internet that are devoted to all of your work, and all your iconic performances, but what's nice is that that's out there. It just, that doesn't, that's not den deleted.

Now you can go on. - If I want to relive those moments fine, but I didn't, I didn't wholeheartedly invest. So people would build statues and talk about me forever. I wholeheartedly invested because people paid that night.

- Yeah. - You know what I said? - Yeah. - And after that, the experience is over, and as Larry stuff we get, that's great.

It will end, and when it does, I hope I have a long run afterwards, because that's, it's not, what defines me? I find a whole other shit, interesting in life. - Yeah.

- And that's the fun ride. I like figuring out what's next and what's going on.

This has been awesome.

“- It's certain we're a delightful person.”

(laughing)

- Did I take life coaching for that?

(laughing) - I have some questions. - Well, listen, you are welcome here any time, you want to shoot the shit about anything, because you're also that very rare part,

you're incredibly, so well-mannered. - Yeah, I know.

- And you are not so, no.

- I'm not. - No, I'm agreeing with you guys. - Yeah, yeah, she's a monster. - But John continued success to you and such a joy having you here today,

seriously. - I can't wait to talk again.

- All right, thank you, yes.

- This won't air. (laughing)

“- It's funny, it's funny, it's funny, it's funny.”

- It's funny, it's funny, it's funny, it's funny. (upbeat music) - Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Conan O'Brien, Sonom of Sessian, and Macquarlie, produced by me, Macquarlie,

executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Leow, theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivina. Take it away, Jimmy.

“Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair,”

and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples, engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns, additional production support by Mars Melnick, talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britcon. You can write and review this show on Apple Podcasts

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