John David Washington Shares The ‘Great Advice’ That He Got From The Rock For ‘Tenet’

John David Washington’s first credited role is technically “Student in Harlem Classroom” in Malcolm X, starring his Oscar-winning father, but his first credited role where his character has a name was Ballers. He starred on the HBO series alongside another football player-turned-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who gave John “The David” Washington some helpful advice before he started filming Christopher Nolan’s Tenet.

“Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson gave me some great advice before he sent me off to the grad school of Nolan. He said, ‘Make sure you eat and stay hydrated.’ He always was telling me to hydrate when we were shooting Ballers,” Washington told Total Film. “I used to think it was funny, but I see what he means now. Hydration is key when it comes to that stuff, man.” You’d need water if you had to eat Robert Pattinson’s dry-ass pasta, too.

Washington also discussed Nolan’s audition process, or lack thereof:

“I guess I never looked at it like an audition process. I’m sure it was, but it never felt that way in the initial meeting. I was informed that Christopher Nolan wanted to meet me, so I appeared at his office, and we talked for several hours about everything and anything but the movie, really. It was like a first date, ‘getting to know you’ thing. It was like: ‘Are you cool’”

It was love at first impossible-to-spoil script.