Fraser, who portrayed adventurer Rick O’Connell in the original Mummy trilogy, revealed that the future Hollywood superstar wasn’t on his radar until discussions began about Johnson potentially playing the fearsome Scorpion King in the 2001 sequel. But once Fraser saw him, he was instantly convinced.
“When they told me you were being considered, I’ll admit — I didn’t know you from the wrestling world,” Fraser recently told Johnson during Variety’s Actors on Actors. “But once I saw you, I said, ‘That’s genius casting. We’d be lucky to have him.’”
He went on to explain that Johnson’s commanding presence — honed in professional wrestling — was exactly what the film needed to create a villain audiences would “love to hate.”
Fraser added, “The confidence, the energy — in wrestling you’re painting with a massive brush. And your artistry has only gotten better.”
The Mummy Returns marked Johnson’s first move from WWE fame to acting. During their conversation, Johnson finally had the chance to thank Fraser directly for believing in him at the very beginning.
“I want to give you your flowers,” Johnson said. “I was transitioning to Hollywood, and you could’ve easily said, ‘He’s a wrestler, he’s not an actor.’ Instead, the message I got was, ‘Brendan is all for it.’ That meant the world to me. You helped change my life.”
Since then, Johnson has become one of the biggest stars in the industry, from Jumanji and Jungle Cruise to voicing Maui in Moana and stepping into the DC universe with Black Adam.
Interestingly, despite sharing the screen, the two didn’t meet until after filming wrapped because the Scorpion King’s scenes were largely CGI.
“We were battling on-screen, but in reality, he was just a piece of tape on a stick during filming,” Fraser once said. “So meeting him afterward was like, ‘Hey! So this is you!’”
And with a fourth Mummy movie reportedly in development, fans can’t help but wonder — could Rick O’Connell and the Scorpion King finally face off in person?
