Count on Dwayne Johnson to casually provide us with plenty of exciting information to consume and ponder during this otherwise downtempo time in our lives. On Friday, the actor took to his Instagram once again to candidly answer a fan question and found time to tease the upcoming Hobbs & Shaw 2.

Johnson’s latest Instagram post came at us hot and fresh from what looks to be an outdoor court, where the A-list action star candidly answered the question, “Was there a movie role [you] really wanted but lost to another actor?” Johnson’s answer is pretty mind-boggling, if only because it teases an alternate timeline I cannot stop thinking about.

“In Hollywood, actors are kind of like in-a-box. There are actors that can vie for a particular role because it allows for them to have a certain look, skin color, size, etc. Fortunately, for me, there aren’t a lot of guys at all who look like me. So, all of my roles, from the beginning of my career, I’ve been a lucky son of a bitch that they’ve been created and designed for me — except Jack Reacher.“

Ex-squeeze me? Is Johnson really about to reveal he badly wanted to play the titular role in Jack Reacher and ultimately lost it to none other than Tom Cruise? You bet. Johnson went on to explain,

“Now, this was ten years ago, and I was in a much different place, I recognize that. Tom was the biggest movie star in the world, and I was not. I got the call saying ‘Hey, you didn’t get the role’ Look, I didn’t even know if I had a shot for it, but the people around me at that time made me think that I did. I felt like I did, I felt like ‘Why not me?'”

Johnson then shared, “I’m positive that the role of Jack Reacher, because it was an established character, an IP that was well known and beloved around the world, that I wouldn’t have had the creative space to do what I wanted with the character. I look back in gratitude that I didn’t get Jack Reacher.”

As Johnson notes, losing the role of Jack Reacher to Cruise (I mean, if you’re gonna lose a lead role, losing it to Cruise is still pretty damn cool) opened up the door for Johnson to create a character that is basically, as he put it, “an extension of me”: Luke Hobbs in Fast Five. Johnson’s appearance in the fifth Fast & Furious movie paved the way for the actor to become a mainstay in the über popular franchise, eventually leading to the 2019 spinoff, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw. Can you even imagine what the pop culture landscape would look like right now if Johnson was Jack Reacher and the character of Hobbs was never introduced into the Fast & Furious universe? The mind boggles.

Oh, speaking of Hobbs & Shaw, Johnson did share some new information about the forthcoming sequel. Toward the end of the Instagram video, he teased, “We have great characters to create, not the characters that Hobbs can kick the shit out of, but characters I think you’ll fall in love with — villains, heroes and anti-heroes.” Villains, heroes, and anti-heroes? Count me all the way in on that.

Watch Johnson’s full Instagram video on the lost Jack Reacher role and Hobbs & Shaw 2 update below.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-0PtiVljlJ/