AEW star and Dark Order leader Brodie Lee was a recent guest on the Talk is Jericho podcast, where The Exalted One and Le Champion shoot the breeze on all things pro-wrestling. During the interview, Lee opens up about his time in WWE, and mentions how he was viewed in the eyes of Vince McMahon. He also discusses having ideas turned down and being forced to do a southern accent. Highlights are below.
The way Vince McMahon viewed him:
The way I do talk, Vince doesn’t see a person who looks like me, talking like me. I don’t think he could get over that. He saw a backwoods hillbilly who talked in a southern drawl. Being from Rochester and being somewhat eloquent, it didn’t compute with him. Arn [Anderson], maybe to the detriment, was one of my biggest supporters in meetings. Arn even said, ‘I’m gonna stop speaking up for you. I don’t think it’s doing you any favors.’ I had my supporters, just not vocal ones. Not ones that were willing to go to bat for me to a point. Once I fell into a role, no matter what I pitched, no matter what I showed anybody, I wasn’t digging my way out of it to the audience of one.
On pitching ideas that would eventually get turned down:
I pitched a whole bunch of different things or angles and ideas to change the character and [Vince] just wasn’t buying them. I wanted to a collector of some sort. I’m very much into serial killers, so I wanted to collect something from each person I would beat. The problem became, I wasn’t beating anybody. I also wanted to be a smart monster, an intelligent monster, where I could speak like I do in an intelligent way and break my opponents down in a way that I wasn’t doing in the Wyatt family. Having the same matches I was having and look the same, but also intelligent. Almost like Bruiser Brody. I don’t think he could see that way of talking.
Being forced to do a southern accent:
I remember going into his office and him telling me, ‘I want you to do a southern drawl.’ I was like, ‘Sir, I’m from Rochester, New York. I think it’s going to sound really fake.’ He goes, ‘We don’t want it to sound fake. Just do me a favor and try it.’ I did it for him and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I don’t like that.’ I remember walking out and thinking, ‘That’s gone, it’s never going to come up again.’ Next week, in the script, it was specific; Luke Harper do a southern accent.
Check out the full interview below. (H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
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