Dean Ambrose was a guest on The Wrestling Compadres Slamcast recently and was asked about his experience working on Lockdown, a WWE Studios action movie he plays the starring role in that filmed in September and took him off television for over a month.
He responded by telling the story of how he learned he was cast for the role and it's great.
"Dude ... dude ... it was so much fun. It was the best, most stress free, care free five or six weeks of shooting ever. I had never done a movie, and I never acted before. They brought it to me, I was asked like 'hey, uh...' I actually thought I was in trouble. You know, I got brought over and was like 'what's going on here, what did I do?' 'Well, we've got this opportunity for you,' and yadda yadda yadda. My exact response was, 'you want me to be in a movie? GET OUTTA HERE! Yeah, I'll do that! Alright, cool. Yeah, no brainer, that's hilarious'. I thought it would just be like I would be in the background holding a gun for like five seconds. I thought I was going to have like a small little cameo part so I was like 'yeah, no problem at all.' Then when they got in contact back with me they sent me a script and then I realized I was like the lead role, you know, the hero character, the main guy in the movie. And I'm like 'oh, that's hilarious. They have no idea I'm not qualified for this at all.' I'm like 'you understand I'm completely unqualified. I don't know how to act, I've never acted before. I've never been on a set for a Dunkin' Donuts commercial let alone an action movie, you know what I mean? I don't know what's going on.' They were like 'oh, you'll be fine.' I went in and winged it."
This is such a perfect Dean Ambrose story. Getting summoned to the office and thinking he's in trouble only to be offered a role in a movie, laugh it off thinking it was nothing, realize he would be the star, laugh even harder at this, and downright tell everyone he's wildly unqualified for what they're asking.
It's also a perfect WWE story because the response was to say "yeah, whatever, you'll be fine, let's do it anyway".
We now anxiously await the release of Lockdown so we can watch Ambrose "wing it" on screen.