“Fighting With My Family,” based on a true story written and directed by Stephen Merchant (“The Office”), is a humorous yet meaningful film about a wrestling family, the Knights, whose lives and dreams change as young Paige (Florence Pugh), gets the opportunity to become the next WWE champion.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson not only has a great part in the film, he is to thank for giving Merchant this seed of an idea. While the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Merchant was also in Chicago, where I spoke with him at length about creating the film.
Questions and answers are edited for length and clarity.
Pamela Powell (PP): Congratulations on your Sundance premiere. First, tell me how you became aware of this story?
SM: It’s all because of The Rock. He was in the UK making “Fast and Furious 6.” He couldn’t sleep one night, and there it was… a documentary about this crazy family from Norwich, and because he’s from a wrestling world and a wrestling family, he related to it. I think somewhere along the line, he realized it had a ready-made, built-in Rocky underdog story that’s just waiting to become a movie. [He wanted someone with] British sensibility to write it because he knew it was a British family… so, he came to me.
PP: So, we can thank The Rock’s insomnia for this great story.
To read the interview in its entirety as it was published in The Daily Journal, Feb. 16, 2019, go to THE DAILY JOURNAL