Dwayne Johnson and Chris Janson are the duo we never knew we needed.
On Friday, April 19, Janson released the music video to his summer anthem “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get” and it features none other than his pal Johnson. In a wholesome conversation with PEOPLE, the stars, each in their own right, open up about their friendship, the music video and their shared love for country music.
“We met in a parking lot. My family were at one of my favorite hotels and we were having lunch and we were waiting for our car to pull around, and Chris had come up with his son,” the Moana star, 51, says of their encounter in 2022. “He introduced himself and he said, ‘Can I take a picture with you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to.’ Took a picture. And we just started just shooting the breeze. We just continue to talk. Then I come to find out in our conversation that Chris was a country music singer.”
He continues, “I happened to say, ‘Yeah, dude, when I was 15, I used to live in Nashville and I tried to get into Tootsie’s and a lot of the honky-tonks… especially the dive bars in Lower Broad, which I had no business being in at 14, at 15. And I said, ‘My go-to song was always ‘The Blues Man’ by Hank Jr.’ And he said, ‘Dude, I just sang that song last night at the concert.’ Then he starts singing it and we start singing it.”
Janson, 38, further explains that when they met it was “not forced” and they “quickly became friends.”
“That just doesn’t happen to people every day. And I am just a firm believer that God puts people across your path at the right time and the precise location when you need it and right when they need it,” he says.
He adds, “The value of this friendship means more to me than music videos. It means more to me than business. It means more to me than anything. It’s just the value of a phone call and seeing someone in person and just being able to be friends with somebody on a real level. The entertainment business always takes us down so many avenues where we can forget what real life looks like and reality.”
After that encounter, Johnson and Janson kept in touch. Then, the “Buy Me a Boat” singer woke up in the middle of the night one night and thought, “‘I’m going to ask DJ if he’d like to be in this video, because he’s the kind of what you see is what you get kind of guy, really.”
“Honestly, one of the only people I know who actually walks it like he talks it and sort of like unabashedly doesn’t care what you think,” he continues, adding the actor was in after he heard the song and arranged to meet up in Texas to shoot the video.
In the music video, Janson is trying out a pair of binoculars at a Bass Pro Shop and images of wildlife flash across the screen. Then, in a different scene, Johnson pulls up in a vintage Ford truck and the pair has a grand old time doing what they do best in a riverbank: spinning tires, singing along to the track from the truck bed and having a couple drinks.
“The most fun part about the video was hanging out in the back of that truck and having a couple of drinks and brotherhood fellowship and just kicking it. And he broke his guitar out,” Johnson says. “And I told him, ‘Brother, this means so much to me. I can’t thank you enough. These past couple of hours have been just so nourishing for me. And I know it sounds crazy. It might sound a little corny, but I don’t get this kind of stuff in my life.'”
He continues, “I fly in, I work, we do the work, I go on to the next thing, life is busy. It’s crazy. Life is a busy treadmill for all of us. I’m getting pushed and pulled in a million different directions. I never have the opportunity just to sit in the back of my pickup truck with a buddy of mine and just play music and have fun. So I loved it.”
Janson feels the same way — and reflects on his few opportunities to be “normal and real and have fun.”
“The entertainment business is the most blessed business you could ever be in because we have the opportunity to, we’re not even working for a living,” he says. “We’re just having fun. But it’s a job, but we love it and it’s entertainment, it’s art. But man, getting in those moments, that’s where the real life is.”
He adds, “And that’s the good thing about this relationship and our friendship is that when all the smoke and mirrors have gone and all the smoke has died out of the room, we still are normal dudes who actually love our life.”
Looking ahead, Johnson says the “Fix a Drink” singer has already extended an invite for a Grand Ole Opry performance together.
“That would be a dream come true,” Johnson says. “And also there might be a little something at Tootsie’s.”
The music video to “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get” is out now.