‘Young Rock’ Star Luke Hawx Tells How His 10-Year-Old Son Helped Him Land Role of ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin (Exclusive)

The hit NBC series Young Rock has entered the stage of Dwayne Johnson’s life where he’s nearing the peak of his WWE career, which means fans get to see Johnson’s early interactions with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who is played by Luke Hawx. In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Hawx talked about how he landed the role of arguably the greatest professional wrestler of all time. 

“Initially, Young Rock had reached out to me for coordinating the wrestling,” Hawx, who is also a professional wrestler, exclusively told PopCulture. “Chavo Guerrero Jr. is their coordinator, and he had another project he was scheduled to do that overlapped just timing-wise, so they needed somebody to fill in. Chavo worked it out where he could end up staying. So a week later they reached out to my agent and said, ‘Hey, we actually want Luke to audition for Steve Austin.’ And I thought, ‘Man, there’s no way in hell I’m going to get this role.’ It’s just such a big opportunity, to play Steve Austin on the number one family comedy on NBC with the biggest star of all time right now, Dwayne Johnson, right? It was such a huge opportunity.”

Hawx went on to say the first audition went well which led to him having a second audition. The only issue was he only had three hours to get it done, and due to time constraints as well as other commitments, Hawx had to do something a little unorthodox. 

“I had my 10-year-old son with me and I said, ‘Son, you’re about to learn how to shoot an audition and read for me,’” Hawx explained. “I thought it was going to be a challenge because he’s never done it before and I had to teach him. I had to teach him all this stuff and we learned it. We went over it together and he crushed it. And when I mean crushed it, it brought my energy up 10 times through the roof, because I’m like, My 10-year-old son, who’s never done an audition in his life, is absolutely crushing reading and filming for me. So my energy went up. I mean, it shot up like a rocket, right? We hit a home run. I got the role. So I got to contribute it to my 10-year-old.”

Hawx began appearing in Young Rock last season and continues to appear in the series in Season 3. Hawx admitted that it becoming Austin was a little intimating at first, but he got comfortable very quickly. “The day we got there to shoot, though, when we actually went on set, I thought to myself, ‘Oh man, what did you get yourself into?’” Hawx said. “And we shot and it was fantastic. We worked with Jeff Walker, he’s a director in Australia, for Season 2, and it was such a great experience. The team was good. Uli [Latukefu] was such a fantastic leader in the locker room as he plays the older Dwayne. And just the whole, the producers, the rest of the cast, everybody from A to Z on the show was phenomenal to work with, and it made the energy in the room come up that much more.”