During his appearance on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, Paul London shared several stories about his interactions with Vince McMahon, including the infamous “limo explosion” segment where he was reprimanded for smiling. London described the chaotic atmosphere leading up to the segment and the bizarre instructions the talent received.
“We were in Hershey, Pennsylvania,” London recalled. “They called everybody over that they didn’t have any plans for… ‘Okay, we have this segment going on the ring now. Vince is going to be acting very queer, okay, very odd, unusual, very, very queer.’ They kept saying queer, I don’t know why, okay, I think they mean odd… ‘He’s gonna come back here and we’re gonna line you all up, and he’s gonna just walk along acting very queer, very odd and just very bizarre and very queer.’ I was like, Okay, I get it. Now, if he looks at you, just play off of it.”
London noted that they filmed the segment nine times, and McMahon looked him in the face every time. Afterward, an official pointed out London’s smile to McMahon. “He power walked over to me. ‘Why were you smiling?!’ Because you’re like, acting bizarre, and I don’t know? Don’t kill the messenger. I don’t get that… It’s funny, it’s cute how sensitive millionaires are. If you think about it, the money, the power, the image, the persona, all of this becomes a big smoke screen… but extremely sensitive, like very easy to hurt their feelings.”
London also shared a story about meeting McMahon years earlier when he was working as a plant in the crowd for a SmackDown taping. “Vince is walking, everyone is like ‘Oh, thank you sir… Thank you sir.’ I went in for an aggressive handshake, and this is what I did. I went in for an aggressive handshake on Vince McMahon. I caught these two [fingers], but I had committed to it. I was already committed. He wiped my handshake off and power walked off. I was like, I’m f*cked. Never working here.”
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