John Cena on His Hilarious ‘Ricky Stanicky’ William H. Macy Hand Gestures Scene

Rich decided to take a risk in John Cena's honor. Running through Cena's comedy résumé, he held up one hand for Trainwreck, then the other for Ricky Stanicky, and made a gesture that anyone who has seen the latter will recognize immediately.

Cena, to his credit, played the responsible adult. "I don't know if you want to be doing that," he warned, half laughing, as the show worried on Rich's behalf. He even flagged his own slip a beat later. "I shouldn't be doing what I just did on the air. I understand that."

The internet, as Cena noted, will handle the rest. A good meme is a good meme, and somebody is going to Photoshop a little extra into that moment. At least, Rich pointed out, he only put one hand out.

Underneath the bit was a real point about how Cena keeps landing in funny movies. He credits the people he works with. Trainwreck came from Judd and his crew, and Ricky Stanicky came from Peter Farrelly. "You start with really good comedic minds," Cena said, and his philosophy is to trust the process and the team around him.

He saved his biggest praise for a co-star. William H. Macy, a brilliant and serious performer, simply leaned into the comedy of it all. Cena clearly loved watching him commit, and the payoff speaks for itself.

Then came the craft question. Rich wanted to know how many takes these scenes require, and whether Cena ever breaks. The answer was a small window into how he works. He tries not to break, because the break is fun in the moment but it can ruin the gold.

His method is repetition. Cena reads scripts ad nauseam until the material becomes, in his words, his favorite song. It is the same approach he takes to his WWE promos, where people catch him talking to himself backstage like a crazy man. The point is to make the lines second nature so he can react to whatever is happening around him.

There is also a generosity to it. The camera never shows a break, Cena said. That stuff lives in the outtakes, and it is fun there. But when a performer is leaning into something awkward and humorous, he does not want to ruin their moment and force them to do it all over again.

The takeaway, delivered with a straight face: we reached the people. We reached Stanicky.