While Johnson loves each of the products, he says his “secret weapon” is the alpha-hydroxy-acid- and witch-hazel-spiked toner. “Emily Blunt is one of my best friends. We were on set, talking about our skin care routines and going back and forth: What’s your exfoliator? What’s your lotion? What’s your morning and night routines? We started laughing and realized we were using many of the same products. Finally, she goes, Well, I gotta ask you: What toner do you use? And I said, ‘I don’t use a toner.’ She looked at me like I kicked my puppy. She sent me the toner that she uses, and I said I’ll give it six weeks. I used it and was blown away, and then I became obsessed. I said: ‘Okay, this feels like a secret weapon for me.’ ”
After testing a number of toners that exfoliate skin and tighten pores, Johnson took his top three to a product chemist and told them to make something that combined the best of each. The chemists warned him the end product might prove too pricey for the line (“This shit is expensive!” Johnson remembers them saying), but he refused to budge. They worked together on the formulation, and it came together for under $10.
Johnson has stories like that for many of the products in the line. The bar soap, for example, has a small window so you can take in the fragrance without opening up the package because, as he tells it, “soap was the thing that always got me, because I’m like, Damn, you can’t open the soap right to smell it right. So I’d be the weirdo to buy, like, 25.” The daily moisturizer is intentionally fragrance-free and has a matte finish to keep you from looking shiny, so that people with sensitive or oily complexions both can reach for it. There’s a deodorant and an antiperspirant. A tattoo balm and stick. And on and on and on.
To Johnson, skin care is an extension of self-care—a fundamental right, not a luxury. And when I ask what self-care practices have made the biggest impact in his life, expecting to hear about macros and protein sources (The Rock has returned to WWE, after all), I start to see why affordability is so intrinsic to the line. He cites a story I wrote about nose breathing, telling me that he’s been trying to incorporate it into his workouts. He tells me that he strongly endorses quiet time and sitting with his thoughts. It seems, to him, that the best things in life are free—and if they’re not, then they shouldn’t cost a whole hell of a lot.
“Clearly, I’m in a different position than I was years ago when I had to stretch it all, but I know what it’s like to go paycheck to paycheck,” he says. “So it’s always been important to make sure that anything I’m lucky enough to create—look, I just wanna make sure that people can afford it. Especially for men in this space where it’s not a space that we’re just used to inhabiting.”
Until, perhaps, now—with a little help from a friend.
