The Major Challenge With Stage Show Songs & Why Everyone Will Love John Cena

Have you ever found yourself needing a scapegoat? Prime Video‘s Ricky Stanicky brings the concept to life as childhood pals Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino), and Wes (Jermaine Fowler) use the titular individual as the blame for a myriad of things ranging from missing family events to flying across the country for a friend getaway.

But when they’re pressed to present a real-life person in the form of this scapegoat, John Cena’s washed-up Atlantic City performer “Rock Hard” Rod steps in. The only catch? Rod wants to stick around in his Ricky Stanicky alias for the foreseeable future, presenting a potential disaster for Dean, JT, and Wes as the man embeds himself into their family and friends circle as well as at work.

The film’s concept had been in the works as early as 2010 with various names attached to the lead role now filled by Cena, such as James Franco, Joaquin Phoenix, and even Jim Carrey. But as viewers will see onscreen, it feels as if Cena was born to play this hilarious role. Below, director Peter Farrelly opens up about the film for TV Insider.

(Credit: Prime Video)

Why is now the perfect time for Ricky Stanicky?

Peter Farrelly: I think it’s perfect now because it’s been a long time since there’s been a real strong R-rated comedy, and we kind of had that opportunity. It’s just luck. It’s not anything we ever planned, but when There’s Something About Mary came out, there hadn’t been [any R-rated] comedies in quite a while, and it kind of snuck up on people, which was half of the fun. People were really stunned because nobody was doing that. And I think we’re kind of back at that place. I think people are going to be very happy that we’re kind of going for it.

What will surprise viewers the most about John Cena’s performance and what makes him the perfect “Ricky”?

I think people are going to be blown away by his performance because he is hysterical. And I know people love John Cena and they know he can be funny, but this is another level of funny. He really just nailed the thing. It was a ball just watching him go. And I think it’s a transformative performance for him where people are going to be thinking of him for everything after this.

Were all the songs from Rod’s Atlantic City stage show scripted, or did you have the freedom to pick which spoofs you were going to have John Cena sing?

It was all scripted. And by the way, we did it wrong. We were stupid about it because the first thing we did was we just picked songs and then we wrote new lyrics for them and then we tried to get them cleared. We gave Tom Wolfe and Manish Raval, our music supervisors, the songs, “Hey clear these,” and they called back a couple of days later and said, “We can’t clear any of those.” I mean, we were using Beatles songs, Springsteen songs…They came back [and said], “No, no, you’re going to have to approve it in advance.” So they went to bands, they said, “Hey, we’re going to change these songs. It’s going to be R-rated, are you okay with it?” So that was the smarter way of going [about it].

What do you hope viewers learn by tuning in?

There’s a couple of lessons in it. Number one is that your lies build and they can come to life, and you don’t want to let that happen. People lie out of fear or out of some insecurity, and if you recognize that, it’s going to come back to haunt you, so don’t lie. And number two is people can change at any time. Another thing I love about this script is when it begins and [Ricky] comes into their lives, the audience thinks, “Uh-oh, this is going to turn into Cable Guy where this guy’s going to become scary and they’re going to have to kill him or something.” And it doesn’t go that way. It goes into a nice place that you never see coming, and it’s only because this guy sees an opportunity and tries to change. And obviously it’s just an extreme example of it, but people can change.

Ricky Stanicky, Streaming now, Prime Video