The Naked Gun is out in theaters and tearing up audiences with laughter. The movie features several high-profile cameos but one that came out of nowhere was from WWE Superstar Cody Rhodes. Director Akiva Schaffer sat down with our friend Brandon Davis of Phase Hero to talk about the film. He specifically went into detail about how they got Cody to join the movie.

“There’s a proud, storied history of wrestlers being actually great at acting, so it’s no surprise. And we put a bunch of wrestlers in MacGruber. They all were directed, and I was there when they were shooting with all these guys, and I remember them all being so pro and so good. And I once shot, I was just reminded on our podcast, there was a Tracy Morgan hosted SNL, where I shot a whole cold open with Tracy, and they were like, ‘Hey, this wrestler is going to come to a cameo,”‘and it was John Cena.”

“I had no clue who he was, and he was fantastic, though. When someone says, ‘Hey, you should put a wrestler,’ I go, ‘Oh yeah, good idea.’ I know it’s a good idea. I cannot pretend I follow wrestling, but my assistant Danny does and he videos like this is the dude.”

“He showed me a five minute clip of [Cody] up on stage doing one of those speeches, talking shit up in in the middle of the ring. I talked about this on one other podcast, one other one of these that asked me, but like, there’s so impressive there off book doing ten minutes of talking to an arena full of people and they don’t stutter.”

“No one can do that. You watch how Oscar winners have to get up on the stage at the Oscars and present and say, three lines off a teleprompter, and it’s the most nervous they’ve been in their life and these guys go up and do that. So, I watched one and Cody was like, ‘Oh yeah, you can do anything.'”

The Naked Gun Details

The Naked Gun stars Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Liza Koshy, with Cody Rhodes and Busta Rhymes. It comes from director Akiva Schaffer and writers Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Schaffer. It’s a “legacy sequel” to the original series, but those legacy elements are played more for laughs than anything really relating to the plot.

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Source: Brandon Davis/Phase Hero

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The Naked Gun Director Reveals How Hilarious Wrestler-Turned-Actor Cameo Happened