WWE icon and Playing with Fire star John Cena salutes real-life first responders, and pledges a large charitable donation in their honor. While it’s not an officially recognized holiday quite yet, October 28 has been designated by many as National First Responders Day. There’s certainly call for celebrating the police, firefighters, and EMTs that arrive first on the scene of accidents, natural disasters, and man-made tragedies, and it’s an idea few are likely to take much issue with.

It’s no surprise to see Cena (assuming one is able to see him) supporting the first responder cause, as he’s always been very active when it comes to performing charity and raising awareness throughout his time in the limelight, first as a surefire WWE Hall of Famer and then as a Hollywood superstar. Cena even holds the record for most wishes granted by a celebrity for the terminally ill children represented by the Make a Wish foundation.

Cena’s new film Playing with Fire, a comedy starring the muscle-bound actor as a firefighter forced to take care of children left in his charge, releases on November 8. With large wildfires currently raging in California, and causing lots of evacuations as they burn, Cena took to Twitter tonight to send a message of support to the first responders fighting those blazes, as well as first responders doing their jobs everywhere else. To that end, Cena revealed he’s asked Paramount - Playing with Fire’s distributor - to pick a first responder-related charity, and pledged to personally donate $500,000 to the chosen cause.

While the more cynical out there might be inclined to point to this as simply a publicity stunt for Playing with Fire - after all, Cena does drop the release date at the beginning - it doesn’t really matter in the end. Considering what California is going through with its increasingly fire wildfires, the first responders there will likely need an injection of financial resources to keep doing their work, as well as provide for their families as they work around the clock to mitigate the damage to both people and property. $500,000 is a large enough chunk of cash to make a real difference to them, even if it likely isn’t much to a big star like Cena.

Curiously, Cena doesn’t say anything about Paramount itself making an in-kind donation to the same cause, which they certainly could afford to do as well, and would get them great PR in the process. One would hope they’ll opt to match Cena’s pledge and send  a cool million to help first responders. Cena may be Playing with Fire onscreen, but fighting fires in real life is far from a game.

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Source: John Cena

  • Playing with Fire Release Date: 2019-11-08