John Cena - He Got Game!

The WWE star chats Us up on hosting Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and the acting role he’s “excited” to start

- Paulina Jayne Isaac

John Cena is stepping out of the ring and into the classroom. The pro wrestler, actor and new Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? host, 42, tells Us how the Nickelodeon show (Mondays, 7 p.m.) is a radical departure from his other job — going to the mat on Monday Night Raw. “I’m literally just a vehicle to show how skilled and talented these kids are,” he says. “I can be the butt of every joke. I admit when I get things wrong.”

You’ve acted before, and you’ve obviously done a lot of other things in front of an audience. How was hosting this show?

JC I think, to a lot of hosts, being in front of a live audience is the one thing that’s, like, “Whoa… I didn’t know there’d be people here.” I want more and more and more people, because you feed off the energy of the audience — and so do the kids. When the audience is ecstatic, the kids become ecstatic. It makes for a really good environment.

And how is this audience different from the Raw crowd?

JC Everybody’s excited because it’s a live show with good energy — but we’re asking difficult trivia ques- tions, so sometimes there’s pin-drop silence in the crowd.