Director Stephen Sommers on Working With The Rock on The Mummy Returns

The Rock got his start in Hollywood in a supporting role in The Mummy Returns, where he played the Scorpion King. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter reflecting on 25 years since The Mummy, director Stephen Sommers spoke about working with The Rock in the sequel. Here are highlights:

On working with The Rock: “He was great. I had never heard of the guy, but then they sent me some footage of him, and he was just perfect. I had to shoot so fast with him because he flew into Marrakesh on Wednesday, and he had to be in Detroit for a WWE thing on Saturday. But boy, was he a trooper. As soon as the studio saw the dailies, the president of Universal was calling me up and saying, “You got to write a movie for him.” Somehow over the next week or so, I came up with this idea that became the Scorpion King movie.”

On Brendan Fraser doing his own stunts: We had a great stunt team, but Brendan is a big, tough guy, and he was younger back then. We kind of beat the crap out of him. Everybody talks about the scene when he gets hung. Usually when somebody gets hung, it’s a dummy, and that’s why they put bags over people’s heads. Brendan was always gung-ho, and he was like, “Make the noose really tight on me.” Then he decided to let his knees sag a little bit. But what he forgot is that the minute you put that much pressure on your carotid arteries, it knocks you out. We all looked, and he’s completely unconscious. It was fine, and he recovered in 10 seconds. But he woke up like, “What happened?”

On if he considered directing the third film in the series: “I didn’t want to do the third movie because I just felt like the first two really came together. I’m really proud of both of them. Third ones are just very hard. So I knew right off, I didn’t want to direct it, and Rachel wasn’t going to be in it. We always kind of joke that the third one is called The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, but it really doesn’t have a mummy in it. That’s when NBC bought Universal, and NBC was doing the Olympics in China. They’re like, “Is there any way you could do a Mummy movie in China?” And I had nothing to do with the Tom Cruise one, obviously.”