Carmella discussed pitching her new character in WWE while speaking in a recent interview on Out of Character with Ryan Satin.
Here is what she had to say:
“When I was sitting at home, there was no real rhyme or reason. It was just, ‘We don’t have anything for you right now. Stay at home until we have a good story.’ Cool. Then they said they wanted to give my character a ‘fresh coat of paint’ and at first I’m like, ‘I love my character, and I don’t want to change.’ Then I thought it was a good thing to change and show some growth. If I was going to have a new character, I wanted something that would resonate and something I would feel. I made vignettes at home. I hired people, created them, and sent them to WWE. They were like, ‘This is great, we love it, this is what we’re going to do.’ I thought keeping the Princess of Staten Island and, for the lack of a better term, make her the Queen. I know I’m not the Queen – Charlotte is the Queen, don’t get me wrong.
But [Carmella] has grown up a little bit and let’s embrace that. That’s what we did. The videos I made were a lot different than the vignettes that ended up being out there but things always end up getting changed. That’s fine. You just take it and do with it what you will and make the most of it. I just knew I wanted to return and make a statement. Luckily, that’s what I did. I had an idea for a new entrance and it needed to be different. I loved my old entrance song, so at first, it felt weird to not be excited and moonwalk and all that. I wanted to do something different, so I ripped off an old Madonna video for a concert. I’m loving it. I was doing the same character for seven years, but it’s still part of me and part of Carmella. You just have to grow up a little sometimes.”
She then talked about how long it took for Vince McMahon to sign off on the character.
“It was probably like two months. It took a while for them to look at the video. I sent it to them and some of the right people saw it but were like, ‘We can’t get it until Vince signs off on it.’ Finally, I was like, ‘I’m just gonna send it to Vince. I’m not waiting anymore. I want to get back to work.’ He ended up really liking it and obviously, he made tweaks and changes.”
H/T to 411 Mania
