Ahead of WWE SummerSlam on Saturday, Seth Rollins spoke with SHAK Wrestling (Shakiel Mahjouri) to promote the show. We have some transcribed highlights below and be sure to scroll down to watch the entire interview.
Seth Rollins on stepping out of his comfort zone and embracing his character:
“I think I learned a lot about how to take chances and have a little bit more confidence in myself. I think it’s one of those things where I lived in my comfort zone for such a long time that I thought I knew better. I thought I knew what I was. I was comfortable in my identity and it was hard to look in the mirror and go, okay, this is working, but what can we do to go to the next level and, you know, kind of revamping your whole presentation is a difficult choice to make and so you think it won’t work, it’ll fail, people won’t like it, you won’t be able to do it, all of these types of things, and sometimes you just got to dive in and see what happens and have confidence in your ability to make anything work. If you are experienced and talented and committed and passionate, no matter what is given to you, or no matter what you choose to do, you can find a way to make the absolute best of it. Now it helps that all of this kind of comes from my brain and these are mostly my ideas with the help of some folks whose opinions I care about, but at the end of the day, all of the things that come out of Seth ‘Freakin’ Rollins are coming from me, and so that helps me. It was definitely a lesson in taking chances and understanding that sometimes in showbiz, that’s what you got to do if you want to continue to evolve and stay relevant in a culture that’s constantly changing and always looking for new, new, new.”
On when he knew he was onto something with the outrageous wardrobe:
“Truth be told, you know, the wardrobe and the character really had its beginnings during the pandemic. So it would have been like, early 2021, really, when it was kind of taking its first baby steps so I didn’t have the same trepidation that I would if I was in front of an entire audience. It was just the television audience and then the computer screens at the ThunderDome, so there really wasn’t as much, like I said, as much trepidation as there might be when I fully stepped out. But when I really started to notice that what I was doing was hitting was really during my rivalry with Edge because people really started to take notice of the colorful outfits. They started to make fun of them. They started to have fun with them. I wore an all silver, bright, aluminum foil looking suit on television one time and I got baked potato chants. If you can get baked potato chants based on what you’re wearing, I think you’re onto something. It took a while to kind of grasp it and hone it and figure it out, but yeah, it started to catch on. People started to wonder what kind of outlandish crap I was going to wear the next week and it caught fire.”
His thoughts on if him and Becky Lynch should be brought together in a storyline:
“We tried it four years ago. Our characters were in totally different places at the time. Our mindsets, just as human beings, were in totally different places. At the time, I was struggling. I didn’t know who I was on screen, off screen. I was going through a lot of self-doubt and depression. So for me, I was just kind of letting it all fly hoping something would stick, hoping I can catch on to something and I thought it would be good for all people involved.”
“For her, her character was in a different place. She was in a different stratosphere and it was hard for her to manage what her character was on screen as The Man, as this female, badass, Stone Cold Steve Austin type character and then on the flip side of that having a husband and a love interest and all that. That kind of was hard for her to put together on screen. For me, I’m always like, let’s go with the flow. I’m not quite as protective as she is in that regard, probably to my own detriment in some cases, but yeah, I mean, it’s one of those things where when you take your relationship and you turn it into a story, it becomes difficult because it’s hard for our audience occasionally to separate fiction from reality and at the same time, our business is built on blending fiction and reality. So that kind of diametric force that is sort of pulling and pushing all the time can create a bit of a struggle.”
“We weren’t ready for it. It didn’t flush out. Our characters weren’t in the right place. Our heads weren’t in the right place. You know, if we did it now or in the future, it might be different, but I’m also fortunate that it’s not a thing that we need to go to. We’re both just very strong individual characters and can carry stories individually on our own which is lovely. So if we go there again, I’d love to give it a second shot. I think there’s a lot to it, but if we don’t, we tried it, it didn’t work, and we’re still very happily married.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit SHAK Wrestling (Shakiel Mahjouri) with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
