Roman Reigns Says The Rock Didn’t Know He Was Auditioning For Hobbs & Shaw, Talks Return From Leukemia

– Roman Reigns spoke with Comics Beat for a new interview promoting his appearance in Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. Highlights are below:

On how he got his audition for the film: “Yeah, it’s kind of a funny story. I kind of just snuck my audition tape in there. I did pretty well, and it worked its way up the channels and then finally DJ hit me up and said, ‘What the heck? I didn’t know you wanted to be a part of this,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, totally,’ but I think at that point, they had already gotten a good idea of what I was able to do and know who I was and see me on tape and get a feel for what was auditioning for the role rather than me just getting there, and they’re like, ‘Who the heck signed this guy up? We have no clue what he can do, and he’s not performing to the standard they had hoped,’ so I just wanted to make sure they knew exactly what they were getting.”

On if he wants to do more acting: “Right now, my WWE schedule, it takes precedence. I want to make sure that I’m in that ring, and I’m performing for the WWE universe. If I can, I don’t see why not learn something new? Why not take on a new craft and a new form of entertainment? It was definitely a great experience, nothing but positives. I clearly enjoyed my time out here on the islands, but just to be able to be involved with such a cool project that’s gonna affect so many people and put so many smiles on their faces and just create a good time. It was very influencing, and I enjoyed myself, and hopefully, if the opportunity arises, I’ll be better for it. The fact that I took this job, hopefully it will help me progress in the future.”

On working to get into ring shape after his leukemia went into remission: “I was out of training for about 3 months, 2 and a half months, all the way into the holidays. I made my announcement in October and pretty much for the whole month of November and the majority of December, my uric acid levels had really risen, so my arthritis was just crazy. I wasn’t moving around great, and me, being an athlete, I’ve always taken care of myself, I’ve always been in some kind of training program, in the gym, always been a gym rat, so for me, to not be able to physically be able to do anything, to be limited, it just was killing me. It killed mentally and spiritually, just inside it was eating me up to not be the man that I’m used to being. Being that physical guy, being an athlete, but once that pain started to subside and my medication really started to kick in and do its thing, it just kind of worked its way out to where I was able to bounce back. Luckily for me, just being an athlete and always being in training, it’s almost like an injury. Say you tear your knee up and you’re just going to train every day…. [at this point the signal drops out] … it’s just a situation of being conditioned and just my body always being in some kind of training regimen that I had some good elasticity to me. I bounced back pretty good. A lot of that has to do with what I believe was the prayers, the thoughts and all the support that was sent my way.”