CJ Perry opens up about the inspiration behind her Lana character in WWE.
During a recent appearance on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet, CJ was asked about the genesis of her gimmick in WWE.
“So Lana in NXT would come to promo class with Dusty Rhodes with at least five different characters and promos, not even kidding, with boards of storylines,” she said. “I don’t know if you ever saw GLOW, when I watched it, I was like, ‘I think she took my real life story,’ because that’s what I was doing. And Dusty loved it. Because, I don’t know about everyone else, everyone else was like, ‘You’re doing the most.’
“But was just working hard and Dusty loved it. He’s like, ‘You’re going to have a very long career in this business.’ Because I was always like, ‘Oh, you don’t like this idea. What about these other five?’ And so me and Rusev started working. One of the five ideas I was working on was me and Rusev, but we were doing more comedy, and he was the Bulgarian trying to un-brainwash me. I was the Russian that became Americanized, and he wanted to un-brainwash me, and it was very comedy and fun.”
CJ Perry on how her relationship with Rusev began
When asked if she and Rusev were dating at the time, CJ Perry responded:
“No, no, we were just friends,” CJ Perry said. “He would come over and we would shoot a bunch of promos, and I guess that’s how we became close. Then the next thing I know, Dusty said to me, ‘We only want you to do one promo. We want it to be serious and see what it looks like.’ I did it, and then the next thing you know, Miro was like, ‘Let’s do something serious.’ And then we were put together. We did one serious promo. He’s like, ‘Let’s not do comedy, let’s do serious.’
“And then next day, I was on NXT with him. I was just serious without an accent. And then Hunter pulled me aside. He’s like, ‘I want you to only talk Russian. Let’s start this and we’ll see how far (it goes).’ And then it was just an evolution. Triple H was very hands-on. He’s a genius. And he was like, ‘Okay, let’s try a different hair, a different suit or something.’ So that’s how the suit and the bun came about.”
