In a long wide-ranging interview on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, Paul Heyman talked about Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, John Cena, Vince McMahon, his own family, and tons more. It’s a very good interview that everyone should hear. Scroll down to listen to the entire interview. We have just a few transcribed highlights below.
Heyman on how he is able to summon his emotions for TV:
“I’m not that good of an actor. I’m method. I’m method because that’s the crutch I lean on. I am not that in touch with my own emotions to summon them at will. I need something to take me there. We did a thing a few years ago where Brock Lesnar turned on me and I’m begging Roman Reigns to take me in. I show up on TV to review this circumstance heading into WrestleMania with Renee Young, who’s tremendous to play off. Oh my God, the fact that she’s not broadcasting the seventh game of the Stanley Cup or any other sport, or Major League Soccer is a crime to their viewers. She’s great. Love working with her.”
“I’m tasked with taking the story forward that Heyman’s life has completely crumbled, that Brock Lesnar’s children who are as Howard Hughes reclusive as Brock Lesnar is, are actually friends with my kids, that our families are intertwined, that our lives are together, that we envisioned riding off into the sunset from this industry together, you know, the conqueror, this massive, freakish, once in a lifetime athlete and his Jew, and of course, my heart’s been ripped out. So I didn’t shave for a week. I did the classic 1970s Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, you know, story of I stayed up for like, I deprived myself of sleep several days walking in and stayed up the night before. I walked into TV and it looked like I was on a real bender. Renee could see me, but I didn’t want to go into the real shocker of it, so I had somebody sit in my chair for blocking purposes. I didn’t want to sit in the chair yet.”
“I brought with me a suit and it was the suit that I wore to my father’s funeral, and I had not worn the suit since. I asked them two minutes before we do this and I only want to do one take. Tell me and leave me alone. The production guy came in and he goes, ‘Two minutes’, and I went, ‘Okay, cool. Keep Renee distracted until we’re rolling and she says my name.’ I put on the suit and it crushed me because all I could think about was my father’s funeral and how desperately I miss him and I loved him, and still love him. God, what I would give to spend five minutes just talking with him. I’m bawling, I’m weeping. I’m openly crying. I get into the chair and I keep my head down because if she happens to glance at my direction, I want this to be shocking to her. I want to capture that shock.”
“Three, two, one. She says, ‘I’m here with’, and when she says my name, I look up at her and I make direct eye contact with her and she gasps and she catches herself gasping and you see her try to get through the lines, but you see she’s looking at me like, oh my God. He’s a wreck. All I had to do was just be upset and my story would be told. You’d get it from my demeanor and my tone and my tenor and my emotions. But her look sold it. Her look made it. Her reaction to my method is what did it. I’m not that good of an actor.”
Scroll down to watch the 2018 segment from WWE Raw and click below to hear Heyman’s interview with Rick Rubin.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
