- Dwayne Johnson has apologized for how he and Oprah Winfrey requested donations for their Maui fund.
- Johnson said that he understood why people were upset and knows that "money doesn't grow on trees."
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson said he understands why people online were upset that he and Oprah Winfrey asked for donations to a relief fund they set up for victims of the wildfires in Maui in August.
In a video posted on Instagram on Sunday, Johnson said he has learned from the backlash, as fans complained that he and Winfrey should donate more to their fund instead of asking others to donate.
"The last thing you want to hear when you are living from paycheck to paycheck is someone asking you for money, especially when the person asking you for money already has a lot of money," Johnson, who has over 389 million followers on Instagram, said in the video. The video has amassed over 520,000 likes at the time of writing.
"I get it, and I completely understand, and I could've been better. And next time, I will be better," Johnson added.
On August 31, Johnson and Winfrey announced in an Instagram video that they had set up the "People's Fund of Maui," which they said aimed to help raise money for locals affected by the fires. The pair said they contributed $5 million each to start the fund. People online criticized the pair for asking for donations, with some saying they live paycheck to paycheck and couldn't afford their own needs.
"I understand money ain't falling out of the sky, and it's not growing on trees, and there's a lot of people out there who's living paycheck to paycheck. And I get it, and I know what that's like, I've lived paycheck to paycheck," Johnson said in his recent video.
In the August video, Johnson and Winfrey said residents whose primary homes were damaged in the fires in Lahaina and Kula could receive $1,200 a month from their fund.
"The thousands and thousands of survivors, the families they have now, over the past couple of weeks started to receive their first rounds of funs," Johnson said in the Sunday video. He did not state in the video exactly how much of the funds has been given to residents.
The fires in Maui were the deadliest to have occurred in the US in the last century.
Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular office hours.