Dwayne Johnson, no reply required

Dwayne Johnson knows what is in the bowl. His younger daughters, Jasmine and Tiana, have asked him to close his eyes, and he can hear them collecting flour, water and oil in the kitchen. He peeks as they approach, then pretends he hasn’t. “I know what's coming,” he said. He lets them dump it over his head.²

The surprise is theirs to stage. His part is to be available, cooperate and get messy. That willingness runs through his accounts of fatherhood, alongside a harder admission: he was not always there in the ways he wanted to be.

In 2022, he said a presidential run was off the table, remembering being “absent for a lot of years.”²⁰

In October 2022, with Jasmine six and Tiana four, Johnson explained what choosing fatherhood over a presidential run meant to him. He wanted the school drop-offs, pickups and bedtime routines, and the stability he had missed as a boy. Asked about waiting in the carpool lane, he joked that once he could see his daughter and knew where she was, he could get some work done on his phone. He had considered the political invitations, but his answer then was clear: “Right now, it's those little girls.”²²

The father he was still figuring out

Simone, his oldest daughter, knew him while his wrestling career was taking off. He says he has changed considerably since those years. Priorities that once kept him wound up have begun to seem smaller beside his family.²

He remembered being a young father still trying to find his own direction, while professional wrestling and then film work kept him away. Keeping his relationship with Simone close took effort across those absences.³

After his divorce from her mother, Dany Garcia, he had tried to present himself to Lauren Hashian, his new girlfriend, as doing fine. Eventually he admitted that he was struggling. He was trying to figure out “what kind of father I can be” without bringing his complicated relationship with his own father into the one with Simone.¹

He and Garcia continued working together after the marriage ended. She manages his career and co-founded Seven Bucks Productions. Johnson says building their working relationship took years. He includes Hashian and Garcia's husband, David Rienzi, in the effort: “all of us doing the work.” There were several adults making this arrangement possible.²

Asked how they had built a working partnership after divorce, Johnson joked about therapy. Dany pointed to the friendship they had kept and wanting things to go well for everyone.¹⁶

Simone remembers regular, if unpredictable, visits after the divorce, and parents she cannot recall fighting. She describes them as good friends.¹¹

Following their lead

With Jasmine and Tiana, he has more control over his time. He knows he is fortunate to set his own schedule. The younger girls are often around the home office he calls “Daddy Central.” A working day can include their company.⁹

In 2021, five-year-old Jasmine interrupted an interview to ask when they could eat lemon cake together. Johnson tried explaining that he was discussing the presidency. Her attention moved to the drink on his desk.¹

He also describes a change in his reflexes. Raising daughters has made him gentler and better at listening, he says. He is learning to help solve a problem with them instead of taking over and fixing it for them.¹⁰

Johnson voices Maui in Moana, but that did not mean Tiana recognized her dad as the character. During one singalong to You’re Welcome, she sat on his lap while he moved her arms with the music and bounced her until she laughed. In a later exchange, he asked whether Daddy was Maui. She said no and wanted the song again.^{17, 18}

During the pandemic, he joked about how often Tiana requested the song, adding: “I have no idea what day it is anymore.”¹⁷

At bedtime, Johnson asks Tiana whom she wants in a story. In 2021, when she was three, her choices could include three little pigs, a wolf and a dinosaur. He takes the characters she chooses and invents a story: “and then I'll make it up.” Jasmine, he said, would rather read or play a game.²¹

Jasmine and Tiana had their own ideas about Moana, too. In 2024, Johnson said they had watched and approved the sequel's trailer but wanted to wait for the Hawaii premiere to see the whole film. He said that, as girls of color, they saw themselves in its heroine.¹⁹

Johnson also wanted the family to share a small part of the live-action Moana. He asked the director for a cameo that would bring three generations together on screen. At the July 2026 premiere, his mother, Ata, joined Lauren, his daughters and Dany in the larger family gathering.¹⁵

Watching her make her own choices

At sixteen, Simone could name one piece of advice from her father that stayed with her: live in the moment. As she prepared to take on a public role at an awards ceremony, she said she was happiest knowing both parents were proud of her.¹³

He also talked with her about the risks of the industry she hoped to enter. As reports of sexual harassment spread through Hollywood in 2017, he said they had already discussed it. He would always have concerns, he said: “I'm her dad.”¹⁴

He remembered Simone approaching him at sixteen about becoming a wrestler. Later, as she prepared to go to university, she called both parents and said she wanted to begin wrestling training instead. Johnson said she never asked him to make a call for her.¹²

His adult daughter needs a different kind of room. When Simone went into professional wrestling, he said she was determined to make her own way and asked him for little. His role was simple: “I'm here watching and supporting.” He had expertise; she did not have to use it on his terms.⁴

He later said their shared work had brought them closer. The sport that once kept him away had become something they could discuss.³

Making space for uncertainty

Johnson's account of listening goes beyond being patient with a child. He has admitted that in arguments he often concentrated on making his point and struggled to acknowledge fault. “My lead foot has been being defensive,” he said.⁶

Growing up, he had not heard his father admit uncertainty or invite him to talk about what was on his heart. He wanted to offer Simone something different: a conversation that could include his own doubts.⁶

With Simone, then twenty-four, he had begun speaking differently: admitting that he was nervous, did not know how something would turn out, or felt scared. Then he could ask, “Can you help me?” He said he had never asked for help as a boy or through his twenties and thirties. This was an adult conversation in which he could stop pretending to have every answer.⁶

While working on an album with Lauren, Johnson asked a singer-songwriter for help finding a song he could sing. The singer sent My Dad, a song about his own late father, imagined partly as a way to tell his future children about their grandfather. Johnson cried when he heard it, but did not feel ready to sing that kind of tribute to his own father. Their relationship was still complicated.⁷

He asked the songwriter to help turn it into a song addressed to his daughters instead: “Just as their dad.” My Dad became Your Dad. During recording, Lauren was there, and Johnson looked at photographs of his daughters. He said he felt free of the usual pressure to deliver sales or box-office results: “It's just from me to them.”⁷

Lauren recognized the tenderness in the song. In a joint interview, she described it as the sensitive side of the father she knew at home with their girls.⁸

The message she does not owe him

Ten days after his father’s death in January 2020, Johnson spoke about the affection he had wanted to hear from his dad.⁵

He wanted his daughters to hear that he loved them without conditions. He had promised eighteen-year-old Simone he would say it every day, including by text. Saying it aloud mattered because he had not received that himself.⁵

He also told Simone she did not have to answer those messages: “You don't even have to text me back.”⁵