In a recent interview on Renee Paquette’s The Sessions podcast, Billy Gunn commented on the original pitch for Billy and Chuck in WWE, how fans reacted to their gimmick, and much more. You can read Billy Gunn’s comments below.
Billy Gunn on the original pitch for Billy and Chuck in WWE and how they embraced it:
“So the ideal pitch was, at that time we had all the Trish’s and the Stacy’s and all the super hot girls that just had everything. They had makeup people, they really didn’t wrestle, they wrestled to rip their clothes off kind of thing. And it was, ‘Hey, we have this idea that you guys are like divas. Like we’ll give you the hairdressers, the blow dryers and all that.’ It started like that.
Then it went, ‘How about…’ Everybody goes, ‘What was out about?’ I go, ‘It was awesome.’ It was awesome because at that point in my career – I love challenging myself to do different things, and at that point in my career, I was looking for a challenge. Maybe not that I was looking for a challenge, but I wanted something to challenge me and to try to pull that off and make the WWE Universe think that I was gay was good. So when they came and said, ‘Okay, now we want you to do this…’ Literally, me and Chuck, like I was saying before, we had a conversation, ‘Hey, if we do this, we have to go all in.
It’s not going to be anything disgusting or raunchy, so we don’t have to worry about that. But I’m sure that we’re going to do some crazy things just to plant it in people’s minds.’ And we did. But we had to be on the same page, and we both had to be invested and we both had to do it 100 percent, whether we fall flat on our faces or not.”
On how fans reacted to their gimmick:
“Luckily, at first, the people were a little off kilter of what was going on, especially when I did the thing in the ring and asked him to be my life partner. Everybody just went, ‘Oh my god, what has wrestling come to? This is ridiculous.’ But the funny thing is, about two to three months in, I think people realized, ‘Holy cow, this is pretty good, and they’re having a lot of fun.’ We did this swimsuit thing with the girls where we did the pose. I will not lie, it was so uncomfortable.
That was one of the things that we went, ‘Hey, this is sink or swim.’ Because we had to practice that, they made us do a little rehearsal. I mean, it wasn’t just a few, they all came. That was the most nerve-wracking thing. It wasn’t so much doing the poses and how we were doing it, it was all the boys. I think that place was full. There wasn’t one person in the back, they all wanted to watch. But luckily for us, it worked. And we had fun and nobody took it that seriously.
“This business is made to be fun, like it really is. You get paid to travel around the world and do something that you love. How stressful can that be? Yeah, some of the backstage and all that stuff and trying to jockey for position is too much, and I’ve never been into that. I’ve always just said, ‘Hey, my work either speaks for me, and I do it that way.’ And I’m not gonna go in there and start doing all this politicking and jockey and stuff.
It’s too much work for me. I’m having fun. I get a paycheck every week. I get to travel around the world. I get to act like a complete goof. Where am I gonna find that job? Well, I’m not gonna find that job. So we were having fun. We were playing characters that were so outside of us, but people bought in (to Billy & Chuck).”
Also Read: Billy Gunn Reveals The Turning Point In His Battle With Addiction, Talks Chyna
*h/t to The Sessions & 411mania.com for the transcription*
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