Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is getting candid about his recent testicular health scare after finding a lump.
“I didn’t even tell Lauren [Hashian],” Johnson, 54, told Esquire in an interview published on Thursday, June 11, of his wife. “I didn’t want to worry her before I knew if it was anything to even worry about.”
The outlet noted that Johnson was supposed to stand on stage with Kevin Hart and Jack Black to promote the latest Jumanji movie, but he could only think about the idea of his left testicle killing him before he turned 54.
“By the way: I’m fine,” Johnson explained. “But I didn’t know that then, and the thing was really painful.”
Days after finding a lump while taking a shower (which he said hurt when he touched it), Johnson called his doctor. The next day, the doctor felt the lump and suggested it might be epididymitis, inflammation of a tube located at the back of the testicle that stores sperm. But the doctor said the actor’s lump could also be cancer.
When the doctor asked him about his schedule, Johnson explained that he had an all-day Jumanji event. The doctor suggested that Johnson undergo an ultrasound first thing the next morning.
“So I had to live with that for those twenty-four hours, not knowing—and I had to be on all day, joking around, making speeches,” he said. “But! I’m OK. So.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Johnson went on to reflect on the line between himself as a person versus how the world perceives him.
“I love the question because I’ve reached this point in my life, Ryan, where I feel like I’ve worked hard to just be at peace. As dudes, as young men, teenagers, twenties, we’re trying to find ourselves,” he explained. “Then, in the thirties, that teenage bravado and confidence begins to wane because you’re like, Oh s***, I got to figure stuff out. You hit your forties and you’re trying to figure who you are. Feels like you got your job locked down. Hopefully you got your family.”
He continued, “But wait: Who am I? What’s my why? By the time I hit my fifth level—I’m fifty-three—I was working hard just to find what peace meant. Things in my world have become less presentational, less broadcast-y, more ‘I’m going to put in the work, and I’ll keep it as quiet as I can.’”
