"Just be a fancy Captain America."

John Cena is known for his work ethic as an actor, which was evident when Polygon caught up with him in London for a brief interview for Matthew Vaughn's new film Argylle. Cena, his wrestler's body filling out a smart three-piece suit, sat upright, locked in eye contact, turned on his considerable charisma and gave full, well-thought-out answers — fighting hard to promote a movie in which he has only a small part.

Part of that work ethic is having the humility to scrap one's preconceived notions about a role and let one's director lead the way. Cena plays Wyatt, a sidekick to Henry Cavill's super spy Aubrey Argylle; they are both fiction-within-a-fiction characters who only appear in certain "fantasy" sequences in the film. Cena said he took a similar approach to working with Vaughn on the film as he did with DC Studios boss James Gunn on The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, after Gunn effectively scrapped all of his painstaking prep work for the Peacemaker character with a single piece of direction : "Throw all that away and just be a sleazy Captain America."

When asked which villainous action heroes from the cinematic canon inspire him when approaching a project like Argylle, Cena said: "I could give you a list, but I don't think it applies to Argylle. Argylle is a strange and interesting world .And again, I did the same thing when I approached the DC Universe. I don't want to fill my head with any prejudices, because I trust the mind of James Gunn, and in this case, the mind of Matthew Vaughn. like, "These are the villains I want to emulate, this is what I want to do," and he's like, "Uhhhh…"