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Parenting is the most important job that most people will ever have in life. Your decisions as a parent will be some of the most important determining factors in whether your child becomes a happy and productive adult or not. It’s a huge responsibility.

Parenting is a difficult and important undertaking, but many parents simply repeat the same strategies used by their parents. How often do we hear people rationalize their decisions by saying, “That’s what my parents did and I came out ok.”

This approach to raising children negates the fact that with every generation there are countless studies done on child development, many of which run counter to popular parenting wisdom from the past.

Dr. Kristyn Sommer, who has a PhD in child development, has received a lot of attention on social media because of her dedication to teaching “evidence-based parenting.” This expertise has made her an advocate for strategies that run counter to conventional parenting wisdom and have stirred up a bit of controversy.

Here are five TikTok videos where Sommer shares some of her evidence-based parenting strategies.

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Three Things I Do Differently as a Mum with a PhD in Child Development

In Dr. Sommer’s first video where she references her degree she admits she refuses to sleep train, co-sleeps with her daughter, and never calls her “naughty” or “bad.” She delves deeper into her thoughts on discipline in the next video.

How To Discipline Your Child So They Actually Learn

Dr. Sommer uses positive reinforcement to discipline her child and as she said in the previous video, avoids the use of terms such as “naughty” or “bad.” If her daughter is doing something wrong she asks her to contemplate whether she’s making a good or a bad decision.

How to Handle Tantrums

Most people tend to think of a tantrum as naughty behavior. However, they are actually a combination of a bunch of little stresses that the child has experienced throughout the day that eventually overwhelm them. Once they hit the tipping point, all of their big feelings bubble up to the surface, resulting in a healthy expression of emotion.

Should You Spank Your Child?

Dr. Sommer is passionately against “spanking, corporal punishment, physical punishment, what ever you want to call it.” She says it needs to stop because it has little effect on behavior and can lead to antisocial tendencies in the future.

She Doesn’t Teach ABCs and 1,2,3s

Dr. Sommer isn’t worried about teaching her child her toddler alphabet or how to count. She says that it “doesn’t really help them with anything” but they should spend that time playing because that’s where they learn best.

While there are still a few significant NBA free agents still deciding on their futures, most of the moves that will come out over the next week are smaller deals as teams look to add depth and fill out rotations.

Few role players had more teams vying for them this summer than Patty Mills, as the sharpshooting Australian guard was departing San Antonio for a role on a contender, and just about every top team was linked to him in recent days. The Lakers, Warriors, and Nets interest were all well known, with others surely checking in on whether they could make a run at the former NBA champion who is a career 38.8 percent three-point shooter.

In the end, Mills chose to go East and join the Nets on a 2-year, $12 million deal that will take up the taxpayer mid-level in Brooklyn and provide them with the backup scoring guard they were about to lose with Spencer Dinwiddie on his way out.

It’s a really good get for the Nets as it all but rounds out a very good guard rotation and gives them a significant upgrade over what they had a year ago taking up significant minutes when Kyrie Irving and James Harden were injured. The hope, of course, is that Mills is playing a smaller reserve role, but he is terrific insurance that can take on a much bigger minutes load should one of their stars be out.

For the other teams that were in the Mills hunt, they have to shift gears and figure out someone else to spend their $5.9 million taxpayer mid-level on, with no one on the market quite as appealing for teams wanting shooting and secondary ball-handling as Mills.

Robin Lopez hit the free agent market after a productive season with the Washington Wizards, largely in a role where he came off the bench and gave the team a veteran presence on its second unit. On Tuesday, we learned where Lopez is headed to next, and really, he could not be heading to a better spot.

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the NBA’s most well-documented lover of all things Disney, will sign a contract with the Orlando Magic. It’s not a long-term deal, as Lopez is reportedly set to make $5 million for the 2021-22 season before hitting unrestricted free agency again.

Going through all the times that Lopez has expressed his love of Disney would take 10,000 or so words. Instead, here is a collection of some of the high points, like the time he used Goofy in a special Disney edition of the board game Clue…

…or the time he got his hands on the jacket Dick Van Dyke wore in Mary Poppins.

Back in 2019, Lopez famously (and unknowingly) purchased rare items that were stolen from Disney, and more recently, he’s used his Twitter account to get into debates about Disney movies.

As for his favorite moment in a Disney park, Lopez and his twin brother, Brook, appeared in a video to lay this all out — Robin told a story about going to Animal Kingdom and riding a roller coaster a lot.

Anyway, the basketball fit is a good one — the Magic have a ton of young dudes, and Lopez gives them a veteran frontcourt presence to help shepherd guys like Wendell Carter Jr and Chuma Okeke. But ultimately, anything that gets Robin Lopez to Disney more frequently is something we can get behind 100 percent.

Taylor Swift has been one of the most consistently successful pop stars of the past couple decades, and the charts have always reflected that. Now, Swift finds herself in some exclusive and historic territory thanks to the long-running success her albums have achieved.

Pop Crave reports that five of her albums have charted for at least 150 weeks (nearly three years) each on the Billboard 200. She’s the only female artist to pull that off in the history of the chart.

As Billboard notes, 1989 has spent 349 weeks on the Billboard 200 (as of the chart dated August 7), while her other albums with at least 150 weeks on the chart are Taylor Swift (275 weeks), Fearless (261 weeks), Red (170 weeks), and Reputation (150 weeks). As for her other charting releases, Speak Now is at 139 weeks, Lover is at 101 weeks, Folklore is at 53 weeks, The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection EP is at 43 weeks, Evermore is at 33 weeks, the Beautiful Eyes EP is at 21 weeks, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is at 16 weeks, and Speak Now: World Tour Live CD + DVD is at 11 weeks.

It’s not just the charts the recognize her importance: Recently, collaborator Jack Antonoff said of Swift’s influence, “I’ve seen her change the music industry first-hand. She’s amazing for being a champion and making things better for the generations to come. She has a long history of rightly exposing some real darkness in the music industry. And I’m personally thankful for it, outside of our friendship and working relationship, just as an artist.”

Kyrie Irving turned some heads with a recent Instagram comment that expressed serious disappointment on his latest signature sneaker through Nike. After a handful of images of the Kyrie 8s leaked, Irving hopped into the comments, called them “trash,” and stressed that “I have Absolutely nothing to do with them!”

It’s unusual for a guy to put the makers of their own signature kicks on blast like this, and while Irving is not exactly the kind of person who is known for biting his tongue when something rubs his the wrong way, sounding off in the comment of an Instagram post instead of hitting up someone at Nike took the strangeness of the whole thing to another level. But in a new statement, Irving issues up an apology, saying “it was unfair to put the blame on Nike or any one person.”

Further, Irving made clear that he and Nike plan to work together to figure out whatever the latest edition of the sneaker will look like, saying “we are diligently working, restructuring, and reimagining things together to make sure we get it right.”

What is not clear is whether or not this will impact whatever release date Nike originally had set for the Kyrie 8s, but the good news is that the sneakers will come with Irving’s stamp of approval, whenever they do his shelves.

Since its release nearly a year ago, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion‘s internet-breaking song “WAP” has been met with both praise and outrage over its raunchy lyrical content. Elected officials have complained about the song on the floor of Congress and the rappers’ performance of the track at the 2021 Grammys resulted in over 1,000 FCC complaints. But compared to a sign language interpreter’s rendition of “WAP” alongside Megan at Lollapalooza last weekend, their Grammys set could be considered relatively tame.

Megan took the Lollapalooza stage Saturday to a massive crowd of festivalgoers where she enticed the audience with a number of her hits. But as she delivered the memorable lyrics to her “WAP” collaboration, someone else on stage stole the show. A sign language interpreter accompanied Megan at side stage to perform the song in American Sign Language, and one fan captured a clip of them performing Cardi’s verse. As expected, “WAP” translated into ASL is as explicit (or more so) as the original track.

This is far from the first time a sign language interpreter has gone viral for their impressive performances at concerts. Most recently, a sign language interpreter who accompanied Twista on stage at a 2019 show went viral for their rapid-fire signing of the rapper’s lyrics.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

“I’ve had a whole career without a real smash hit,” these are the words of Joel Kinnaman, who, kind of surprisingly, isn’t wrong. It sure seems like it should be wrong. After his breakout role on The Killing, Kinnaman has certainly been in some good movies (he’s great in Run All Night), but his starring role in a RoboCop reboot didn’t catch on, followed by the critical bomb that was the first Suicide Squad, well, as Kinnaman tells it, he noticed he had to start auditioning again. (Although, with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, not having a “real smash hit” is probably about to change.)

Kinnaman is an introspective interview. There’s always an honestly and thoughtfulness to his answers. And it’s hard not to hear the pure joy in the cadence of his voice when he talks about The Suicide Squad: That after what he went through in the first movie, also playing Rick Flag, that he gets to, now, have his redemption. Even though, as he tells it, due to scheduling he almost wasn’t in this sequel. Also, what exactly did happen on the first movie. As one of only a couple of cast members to have large parts in both film, Kinnaman takes us through what happens when one movie has, what he calls, “conflicting visions” and then another movie has one clear vision that didn’t change much from the first script.

About 15 minutes into The Suicide Squad I said to myself, “Now we’re talking.” This is the one I was waiting for.

Yep. I felt the same way. When I saw this, I saw it in the theater with my fiancee. And while hopelessly biased, of course – I’m really not the person that you should listen to when it comes to reviewing my own films because sometimes I fall in love with a project…

But that’s normal. It would be weird if you hated everything you did.

Yeah, but I’m probably over-critical of my own work, but then I’m usually a little too generous to the project, as a whole.

Here’s what I keep thinking about: what might’ve been going through your head. And tell me how off base I am because the first movie comes out and, let’s be honest, people weren’t into it. Something was amiss there.

Yep.

So then they hire James Gunn. And to me, it almost feels like being on the basketball team in high school or something like that. And you had a pretty lousy record so they hired a new coach. I’d be wondering if I’m still on the team.

I definitely had that thought. But I knew that Rick Flag was such an integral part of it, so it’d be hard to cut him out of it. But yeah, it’s always that question. I’m wondering how he views it, how he views my character. Is it going to be fun? And I also had a scheduling nightmare going into this…

Oh, how so?

Well, because it had been so much time between the first and the second film. This is contractual blabber, but the Warner Bros. option had lapsed. So I was doing the show for Apple TV+, For All Mankind. So because the option had left, For All Mankind was in the first position.

Oh, I see.

And James had a very set time that he needed to shoot this because of Guardians of the Galaxy 3. So they couldn’t shift the dates at all. And the second season of For All Mankind and The Suicide Squad was exactly the same time. But they made it all work, but they had to rewrite and there were a lot of things that needed to happen for the schedules to work out.

I don’t want to make it sound like every question I’m trashing the first movie, but I think I would feel bad for you if you didn’t get to do this one after taking your lumps with the first one.

Yeah, I would’ve been devastated. And it was so fun to get to play this version of the character as well. The first version of the character, I never really got loose in it, to be honest. And I was a bit of a plot donkey.

There were a lot of plot donkeys in the first one. When I think of the problems with the first one, you are not on the list.

Okay. Well, I appreciate that. But just as an experience, this was so much more of a creative experience for me and it was also a little bit scarier because I was stepping into territory that I hadn’t really been in – having lines that are written to be funny and they’re kind of ridiculous. It was just having to work with that kind of material and to make it seem natural and easy and not forced. It gave me a lot of respect for these comedians that make it look so easy, because it’s not that easy.

And nothing against David Ayer, I like a lot of his movies. Fury is awesome. It’s just I don’t know what happened in that first one, but what does James say to you to have faith that whatever happened in the first movie won’t happen again?

I loved working with Davi, as well. There were parts of that process that were super memorable and there were parts of that process that really were instrumental in some of us bonding so deeply during the experience of the first one, but there were some conflicting visions there, I think. That sometimes happen on these big movies and it can get tricky.

Is that what you think happened? Because it’s such a confusing thing. And it sounds like James Gunn had a lot more freedom to do his vision and that was part of the deal.

What was so clear with James, that’s the first script. When I got sent the first script, I was like, holy shit. First of all, I was laughing on every page. And the film is very, very close to that first version of the script that was sent out to everyone.

How rare is that with a movie of this size?

It doesn’t happen. It does not happen. Warner Bros. did their biggest builds they’ve ever done in the history of Warner Bros. These are the biggest set builds they’ve ever done. It was a massive movie. It’s the most expensive R-rated movie that they’ve ever done. And we had zero overtime and zero reshoots on this film. That’s unheard of! That doesn’t happen! These big movies, they usually build in a three-week reshoot process that comes after the first cut. But there was such a clarity of vision on this film and everyone knew exactly what they were doing. Everyone knew exactly what film they were making and it just makes it for such an easy experience.

How can you, as an actor, try to get yourself in those situations as opposed to situations where it’s messy and doing reshoots and nothing seems to be in order here? How can you do that? I guess the easy answer is work with directors who know what they’re doing, but then again, David Ayer knows what he’s doing…

I would love to do another movie with David, as well. It’s a different kind of experience and I think David is the kind of director that he also leaves a big part of the creative process to the shooting. He’s also figuring out the movie that he’s doing while he’s shooting it.

Well, that sounds very different than James Gunn. When you say you got the script and that’s pretty much the final movie.

It’s the complete opposite, in a way. And you can see, in David’s films, there are some films that he’s made that have turned out fantastic…

Oh, yeah, 100 percent.

So it’s a different process and I think they’re suitable for different kinds of movies. But yeah, I’ll just do every James Gunn movie.

Let’s just say there’s a lot of carnage at the beginning of this movie. And I remember thinking, man, this might be a really short interview.

Yeah. There are some people that don’t make it before the title cards. The shock value that he was able to create is incredible. It just keeps you on your toes and I think it’s pretty remarkable in a movie like this that it just does not feel predictable at all. You don’t know who’s going to make it through.

Yeah, there are actual stakes in this movie.

Exactly.

So how does this work? After the first movie the reviews were bad, were you worried at all professionally? Because that wasn’t long after RoboCop, which didn’t didn’t do what it should’ve done. Suicide Squad seemed like a sure bet. And then that doesn’t work. Were you worried, “okay this might be a problem?”

Yeah, I’ve had a whole career without a real smash hit. But it’s also made me not … I don’t count on one movie to change anything for me and I don’t expect any movie to do a drastic change. The way that I look at it, I keep my head down and I focus on the craft. And then the career will come. There have been periods in my career where, after RoboCop, for example, it didn’t bomb, it made money, but it took a couple of years for it to make money. It sort of broke even.

Right. And there wasn’t a sequel.

Exactly. Yeah. It wasn’t a hit. Then it was a little slight. All of a sudden, I had to audition again. And I’m okay with that. I don’t take anything for granted and I feel incredibly blessed to just be in this position to do this for a living. So, for me, I’ve sort of detached myself from expectation on the performance of any given project that I do. Of course, you try to pick projects that are going to be successful, but I try to focus on the craft and focus on doing characters that I find interesting. And where I feel like I’m challenging myself and I can do something that I haven’t done before. I focus on trying to get better at my craft and going deeper into the characters. So far, it’s worked. I keep getting interesting things coming my way. Sometimes I have to fight for it, sometimes it comes my way. We’ll see. There was a time when I got stressed. When I felt like, “Ah, I’m not making it to the pinnacle.” That’s my goal, to get to the pinnacle where you have all the options. There is a creative reason to strive to have more success in this business.

Sure.

And to become a bigger star because then you get the opportunity to work with the most interesting directors and you get the best scripts sent to you. But I just take it as it comes and I try to make interesting choices and do as deep of a performance as I can. I always try to work hard. And then I think it’s a bit of luck. You have to have a little luck, as well.

Speaking of luck, not many movies do what the first movie did and then get a sequel…

That we got a guy like James to come in and do this? Because of his unfortunate situation, or how people reacted at Disney at the time, and it became our fortune and we were so fortunate to get him to this. I’m so happy because it feels like the first movie was a little bit of a stain. And this completely just … it’s going to change how people view this whole franchise.

Oh, no question.

It’s going to completely wash that away and it’s going to make something that I kind of looked at as, “Oh, well, you win some you lose some.” And then now it’s transformed into something that I’m uber proud of.

Yeah, this movie isn’t a win some, lose some situation.

I would love to just go back and do another movie with James right away, just because I think he’s so damn good. He brought out a different side of me that I’m now determined to keep working on and finding things a little bit more in a humorous space. I would really like to go do a comedy. And our process in this film, I told them straight up, ”Don’t be shy with me. Work with me on this and work with my timing and delivery.” Because even big directors, they can get a take and then they don’t want to work too hard on everything because they’re afraid that maybe the actor’s confidence will be affected or it’ll be a bad vibe. And I told them straight up, “I want to see this as a workshop, as well, and I want to get better at this. So just work with me on this and let’s really get to the bottom of it,” and he did. So we had a great relationship where I felt I really learned a lot in the space and with this kind of tone. So I’m looking forward to working more on that.

‘The Suicide Squad’ will be in theaters and stream via HBO Max on August 6th. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo fired back at a lengthy report of sexual harassment allegations, and what happened was… yikes. To get up to speed here in a slightly breezy (although hopefully still appropriate) manner, the New York Attorney General’s office released a 165-page report that detailed sexual harassment allegations from nearly a dozen women (at least 9 of which were state employees) against Cuomo. One of those women was a state trooper (who was tasked as part of Cuomo’s security detail) who alleged that he inappropriately touched her “in an elevator,” where he “ran his finger from her neck down her spine.” In another instance, Cuomo allegedly “took his open hand and ran it across her stomach.”

In response to all of the women’s allegations, Cuomo released a video statement (click here to watch the full event on YouTube) in very swift order to counter the NY AG’s conclusion that he facilitated a toxic workplace, which allowed “harassment to occur and created a hostile work environment.” In doing so, he essentially gaslighted multiple accusers (by name) on national TV while claiming that he didn’t commit any of the alleged acts, and he suggested that people were misremembering moments and assigning wrong intentions on his behalf. The most bizarre portion of the video statement, however, was a montage of him touching and kissing people. It rolls out like an ill-advised effort to defend himself as a touchy-feely-kind-of guy. Not a good look!

Via the Recount on Twitter, here’s that montage, which includes a photo of Cuomo with, uh, Bill Clinton.

Cuomo, in denying the groping of anyone, also made this declaration:

“I do kiss people on the forehead. I do kiss people on the cheek. I do kiss people on the hand. I do embrace people. I do hug people. Men and women. I do on occasion say ‘ciao bella.’ On occasion, I do slip and say ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’ or ‘honey.’ I do banter with people. I do tell jokes, some better than others. I am the same person in public as I am in private.”

Well, no one can figure out why anyone thought this was a fantastic idea. It feels like the pinnacle of gaslighting, and think of the poor staffer who was directed to put this montage together. Naturally, people were absolutely beside themselves while reacting to this disastrous idea.

You can watch Cuomo’s full statement below, courtesy of PBS NewsHour on YouTube.

(Via Politico & The Recount)

As a professional skateboarder, Jagger Eaton doesn’t fear much in his life. He’s been doing this on the biggest stage since the ripe old age of 11 when he became, at the time, the youngest to ever compete in the X Games. However, during his time at the Olympics, there was one thing he was afraid of. It was the 12-foot rail he was trying to land his best tricks on. Landing tricks on it was going to be the key to medaling this event, but while he was capturing everyone’s attention on TV because of how he jammed out to his music, that attention was drawing away from the fact that he was trying this on a busted ankle.

“[The] nosegrind I did on my third trick was a big deal for me.” Eaton said to UPROXX last week on his post-Olympics press tour through Red Bull. “That rail is really scary. That was by far the biggest rail I’ve ever done that trick on. And yeah, I mean, looking back I don’t know how my ankle survived…that was very unusual for me to see a rail that large. I know it’s the Olympic games. So I know how people get down. I know when they designed that course, they’re like ‘we’re going to make people send’ totally understand but I got to that rail. I’m like yeah, this thing is massive like it is no joke. It is a 12.”

Eaton’s nosegrind helped win him a bronze medal, but in retrospect, it may have been one of the most impressive tricks of the contest because of the circumstances. One month before this, Eaton broke his ankle competing in qualifiers in Rome. The results of that injury left him competing in Tokyo with fractures and torn ligaments in that same ankle, something that’s impossible to move completely out of your mind as you skate around one of the biggest street courses you’ve ever seen.

The 12-foot railing may have been the scariest part, but it also set a precedent for how the Olympics was going to be different from other skateboarding competitions. On a course that’s more compact, competitors like Eaton can gain some momentum, get a flow going, and string together a series of tricks to impress the judges watching them. However, the Olympics went the other direction. The course was huge which not only meant that the skaters had a plethora of options for how they wanted to skate it, but they were going to need a lot of speed to keep their momentum going. This was no problem for Eaton, minus the broken ankle.

“The Olympic course was huge but I love courses that are big.” Eaton said. “I feel like I’m a skater who skates really fast and that course was really good for that. So I mean, the only thing that kind of made the whole course stand out and really gnarly is that big section. I’ve been competing on a pretty bad ankle. I mean, I broke it in Rome only a month ago and so I still have two torn ligaments and two fractures in there. Oh my god, and skating that big section. Really tough for me.”

Despite these challenges, Eaton managed to push through and by doing so he became a name that is going to be remembered in skateboarding forever. He’s the first American to ever win an Olympic medal in skateboarding as a member of the first group that competed in Olympic skateboarding. It’s an honor that isn’t lost on Eaton, and he’s thrilled that the world got to see what skateboarding was all about.

“I feel like skateboarding deserves to be in the Olympics,” Eaton said. “I feel like people don’t really give skateboarding a lot of credit and don’t take the legitimacy of what we do and the athleticism it takes to do what we do and I feel like putting it on that Olympic platform gave an opportunity for people to see what we do.”

By putting skateboarding on the Olympic stage not only were Eaton and the rest of the competitors able to show the incredible skill skateboarding requires, but it did something else that ended up capturing the hearts of a lot of fans. Skateboarding is less about competing against others and more about competing against yourself.

“It’s all for the love of skateboarding, man, when you’re out there and you’re on your board and everything fades away.” Eaton said. “One of the biggest lessons that skateboarding teaches you is persistence and the ability to fall and get back up literally and I feel like it’s hard it’s you know, it’s hard to do that all the time but again, it’s like that’s where that passion and love shines because like I’ve been saying this a lot but it’s the truest form of how I feel about skateboarding. It’s the Olympic games, I was in the most pressure filled situation of my life. I put so much pressure on myself that contest. I trained for four years for that contest and at the same time in that final, I was in the most [high] pressure situation in my life, but I was having one of the greatest skate sessions in times of my life and I feel like skateboarding consistently reminds you that love and passion overrules. Any feeling that you have towards negativity in your sport, you know? If you love it, you really love it. You’ll go the distance with it.”

We saw this love for skateboarding throughout the street events for both the men’s and women’s events. When Yuto Horigome was running away with Gold he wasn’t met with stares of discontent. He was congratulated and praised. When two thirteen year olds, Momiji Nishiya, Rayssa Leal, and sixteen-year-old Funa Nakayama took the podium in the women’s event it was seen as an example of how skateboarding is for everyone. It’s a sport where the only expectation the athletes have with one another is the ability to skate. It’s highly competitive, but they want everyone to succeed and land tricks because that is what pushes the sport forward and pushes everyone to be better, go higher, and try harder tricks.

“The relationships between all my competitors — and you know all my competitors are my friends — that’s why they’re some of my best friend’s is because I love that my friends want to beat me in contests.” Eaton said. “Like I love that. Like if you don’t surround yourself with people that are better than you you’re going to become the medium of who you hang out with. Those are all my homies and it’s all love and I was so stoked for Yuto, that he took it in Japan and it was just, it was amazing to be a part of that moment.”

The Olympics, for all its faults, is at its best when the competitors are showing the level of respect for one another that Eaton is mentioning. Everyone wants to earn Gold and go back home as a hero to their country, but they want to do that for themselves above all else. This is why skateboarding was the perfect event. They already embody what the Olympics claim to represent and Jagger Eaton, fighting through ankle fractures to win Bronze, is an example of that. When Eaton gets out on a course the crowd disappears and the stage is gone. It’s just him, the course, his board, and the tricks he wants to nail. It’s the happiest place in the world for him. When he comes out of it, he’s holding a Bronze medal, the first ever skateboarding medalist in U.S. History.

While promoting Disney’s Jungle Cruise, The Rock told told an interviewer that he wishes the Fast and Furious crew “well” as they go on to make Fast 10 and Fast 11 movies “without me.” The comment sure made it sound like he was done playing Luke Hobbs in the main franchise films. However, the remarks were in response to a question about his long-running and still-simmering feud with Vin Diesel, so it was hard to gauge how serious The Rock was being about his future with the franchise.

Well, according to his Seven Bucks production partner and president, Hiram Garcia, The Rock was as serious as a heart attack.

While sitting down with Collider, Garcia confirmed that The Rock (or “DJ,” as he calls him) will not appear in the Fast 10 and Fast 11 because he made the decision to walk away from the main franchise films after getting into his public beef with Diesel while making The Fate of the Furious. That being said, The Rock is still committed to making Hobbs and Shaw 2 happen, which is good news for fans of the team-up film starring Jason Statham:

After filming Fast 8, DJ made the clear decision to close the Fast & Furious chapter for all the evident reasons. He wished them all well and shifted our focus on to other story telling avenues. So while he will not be in F10 or F11, that won’t in any way interfere with our Hobbs plans. Obviously all these characters exist in the Fast universe and we love to see all aspects of that universe thrive and succeed.

“For all the evident reasons” is, of course, in reference to The Rock’s ongoing trouble with Diesel. When asked to respond by The Hollywood Reporter for his thoughts on Diesel claiming their feud was simply the result of good old-fashioned, “tough love” method acting on Diesel’s part, The Rock made it very clear how he felt.

“I laughed and I laughed hard,” The Rock said. “I think everyone had a laugh at that. And I’ll leave it at that.”

(Via Collider)