Paul Wight says he landed the Captain Insano role in The Waterboy by accident, and that he is still working on the character.
The AEW commentator told Scott Johnson on News4JAX’s Going Ringside that he is putting real work into how Captain Insano is presented.
“Captain is a lot of fun. We’re still working on that actually. I have a lot of fun with it. Of course, that character was iconic in the movie Waterboy,” Wight said. “I’m going through a lot of hard work to bring that character out, to present that character in its best possible format.”
How Paul Wight became Captain Insano
Wight said Adam Sandler was “fantastic” to work with, and that he got the part “purely by accident.”
“They were doing reads for it in Orlando at Disney. We were doing a [WCW] Worldwide taping then, I think, and I heard that Jim Duggan had read for it because it was on the board,” Wight said. “The entire locker room read for it because they were reading all the wrestlers, and it was a open casting call, and their studio was right next door to where we were posted up, and I was like, ‘Oh, Duggan read for it. Yeah, he’ll probably get it,’ because I just thought, you know, Captain Insano, crazy personality, Jim Duggan, be great.”
“So, that was that. I didn’t pursue it anymore. And in that same building was where the restrooms were, and I cut in there to go to the restroom, and that casting lady was in the hall,” he said. “She says, ‘Who are you?’ And I went, ‘I’m Paul Wight. I’m the Giant.’ She goes, ‘You haven’t read for me.’ I said, ‘No, ma’am.’ … She says, ‘Everybody’s read. Will you please read for me?'”
Wight said he had nothing prepared.
“I was not prepared at all, like, you know, so I just looked at the, you know, I went in there, looked at the script, and I just said, well, I’ll just rip off Hulk, cuz that’s what I knew at the time,” Wight said. “So, I went in and did Captain Insano with a Hulk Hogan voice and really didn’t think two seconds about it. There wasn’t any deep prep or any of that kind of stuff. And then she says, ‘Oh, congratulations, Captain Insano.’ I’m like, ‘What?'”
“And then, like, I think like two weeks later, I went back to Orlando and we filmed our scene,” he said.
Wight said his first movie was Reggie’s Prayer, with Reggie White, Pat Morita and MC Hammer.
“I was the only Caucasian in the film and I was the town drug dealer. So it’s a bad one,” he said.
The Waterboy, starring Sandler, was released in 1998. Wight played Captain Insano, the star of the wrestling show Sandler’s Bobby Boucher watches. AEW filed to trademark the Captain Insano name in January 2025.
AEW Dynamite: Blood and Guts is this Wednesday, November 4, at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida. The show airs at 8 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. CT on TBS and HBO Max.
