How do WWE superstars blur the lines of reality and character? We asked one (2024)

Promotion is a massive part of sports entertainment, whether the NFL or WWE, and what’s endlessly fascinating is how professional wrestlers have to navigate media opportunities where some publications want the performers answering questions in character, while others want to talk about the business of professional wrestling with the person behind the stage name.

“Sometimes, it can be fairly difficult,” said 26-year-old Demi Bennett, one of the rising stars of the WWE who performs under the name Rhea Ripley. “A lot of the time, I answer in a little cheeky in-between of both. I put some Rhea Ripley sort of twang on the business side of my answers, but I make it a little bit cheeky, a little bit more me. I do so much media now, so it’s just trying to figure out how to answer things in different ways.

“When I first started, it was a very difficult thing for me, especially because I was a very shy person. Having to do all these interviews was very daunting and terrifying for me. But you do it for enough years and you sort of just get used to it.”

The paradox for Ripley (we will refer to her stage name heading forward) is that she shows zero fear when performing in front of thousands of people. She’ll have one of the signature matches at WrestleMania 39 this weekend at SoFi Stadium when she faces longtime WWE Superstar Charlotte Flair for the SmackDown Women’s Championship. The best professional wrestlers combine incredible showmanship and crazy athleticism — and that defines Ripley.

The Athletic does not cover pro wrestling as a beat, but I have always found the intersection of wrestling and media to be fascinating.

Below is an edited version of a recent conversation I had with Ripley. You can hear the whole conversation here.

I asked (fellow WWE Superstar) Seth Rollins a similar question about how he’s able to go seamlessly, sometimes even within the same answer, from talking about the business to really amping up his Seth Rollins character. He said it often had to do with whether he had storyline conflict about a person someone was asking about. How do you see it?

Ripley: You could ask me about people on SmackDown that I haven’t been in stories with, and I’ll tell you straight how it is, how I actually feel about them and how I think they’re doing in the business. But (with) someone obviously like Charlotte Flair, I’m going to answer it in a certain way where it’s sort of pumping up WrestleMania. I’ll talk about how good she is as a performer, but also how much better I am, how I’m going to absolutely destroy her at WrestleMania. It’s a funny in-between. It’s definitely easier to float between the two than it should be.

How much media training have you done during your time in wrestling?

When I was in Australia, we pretty much did no media training at all. Wrestling in Australia, it’s been growing a lot over the last few years, but when I was there, it was still fairly small. The media that we did get, we were just excited to get. We didn’t do any training for it. We just answered in the way that we thought we should answer.

When I first got to NXT (WWE’s developmental circuit), we did a couple of media training days. But it was in a big group of people, because everyone at NXT, we were all new on the job and just trying to get better and more prepared for getting drafted to Raw or SmackDown. We had four or five media classes, but it was an embarrassing sort of situation, especially for me, someone who was so shy. They’d bring you in front of everyone at the PC (WWE Performance Center), and they’d have a person there that would interview you. They’d find something that you said in your answer and ask you another question in an attacking manner to prepare you for those sort of interviews — because they do happen every now and then.

A lot of the time, you just find your own flow and your own answers and how you want to portray yourself in front of the media. I feel like I’m still learning. I still do screw up every now and then and get tongue twisted. I get nervous. But it’s all about being a human and growing and learning from your mistakes. I don’t know if anyone else has had more media training than me, but I definitely didn’t feel like I had enough, especially me being very nervous and not being someone that likes speaking in front of people. But I’ve gotten used to it. It’s just years of practice.

How much say do you have to pick and choose when a media request comes in?

I feel like if I really wanted to, I could get more of a say in the media that I do. But me being the person that I am, I’m a very, “Yes, I’ll do that for you” person. I do pretty much all the media that they tell me about because I’m still trying to grow as a performer and get my name out there. I feel like it’s good for me to do these things and have my name thrown out on Twitter and retweeted by people and shared and just getting more followers for not only WWE but for myself, as well. I want to put my story out there so people know who I am as a person. There have been some requests where I’d rather not do just because of the date or the time, but if it’s not conflicting with something, most of the time I just say yes.

When you are answering questions from the mainstream press, are you answering questions differently versus a wrestling publication?

Yeah. For the mainstream wrestling ones, it’s a bit easier to speak just because there is a lot of wrestling lingo that goes around. I don’t really have to be too careful with how I word things for people to understand. Where, like, if it was doing a (mainstream TV show interview), if I was to say a certain word, I’d have to explain that word — like, the word gimmick. I might have to explain what that means to people because they’re not wrestling fans yet. I’m still my persona, and I’m still very cheeky and mischievous, and I still answer in the same sort of ways. It’s just with different verbiage.

How do you navigate what has become a big social media following?

The thing about social media, a lot of it is negative. They have like buttons, but they don’t have dislike buttons. The only way to dislike something is to write a comment. Most of the time, you don’t see the likes. I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I love it in the fact that I get to see what my friends and family are doing back at home, and I get to see what people are doing in their everyday lives that I follow. I want to know and see what they’re doing. Like, if they are going to the gym, I get to watch these new workouts, and then I get to try it.

But it is a very poisonous place to be. When I first started getting a little bit of hype, I would see absolutely everything that I was tagged in — the good, the bad, everything. It drove me, but it also hurt me at the same time. I tried not to care about some things, but they would really get to me. But then, I’m one of those people that loves to prove people wrong and make them seem like they’re a fool. A lot of the negativity did drive me and push me to the point that I’m at today.

With how big my following is now, it’s very hard to keep track of everything. Sometimes, I don’t want to go on social media because there is too much negativity, which is really sad because then I don’t get to see the cool things like fan art and people appreciating what we do for a living. At the end of the day, we all love what we do here at WWE. We all love wrestling, we love every aspect about this job, and we do it for the fans. We really want to make them happy and give them a great show. So when you see the negativity on there, when you see them trying to tell you how to do your job, it does suck. I’ve learned over the years not to care so much about everything. I don’t see everything these days, not like I used to. I still try to find fan art, but if I see a couple of negative comments, I’ll get off of it and just close it out completely.

(Top photo of Rhea Ripley: Alex Bierens de Haan / Getty Images)

Richard Deitsch is a media reporter for The Athletic. He previously worked for 20 years for Sports Illustrated, where he covered seven Olympic Games, multiple NCAA championships and U.S. Open tennis. Richard also hosts a weekly sports media podcast. Follow Richard on Twitter @richarddeitsch