Big E On How Much Creative Freedom WWE Gives Them, WWE Sometimes Being Outdated With Pop Culture
During their recent promotional tour of India, Big E and Kofi Kingston spoke with NDTV Gadgets 360 on various topics. Below are some highlights from Big E:
Having creative freedom:
"We have a long leash for sure. That's taken time to get trust from the higher ups and people of importance. But yeah, we don't write everything. A lot of times we're given scripts and we disagree with the script's directions and we have some leniency to retool. A lot of times it's 'hey we need an overhaul and none of it works' and sometimes it's just a few tweaks here and there.
"We've been very fortunate. A lot of talent really don't have that ability to just say 'hey I want to rewrite this promo' but it's really helped us. And one thing we've noticed too is that as much as we – as a company – try to attach ourselves to pop culture, we felt also that a lot times they were a little outdated or a little bit, outside of their window of freshness."
Influence of social media on their work:
"We're on Twitter, we're on Instagram, we like viral videos. It's something we felt was needed in WWE. Something that was contemporary, something that was just hot on Instagram or Twitter or when Vine was still a thing, we wanted to implement that stuff immediately. Cause that's the stuff we were just in the car buzzing over that made us laugh so why not use that the next day? I still vividly remember the hubbub over the Steph Curry shoes happened and when we talked in the car I think, it was a day later and we were in New Orleans and Kofi was all like 'alright I gotta get these shoes' and we wore them on TV and then we had to clown them for it.
"But it's things like that people enjoy. People want stuff that's up to date, that feels current, that feels fresh, that's in the zeitgeist, that's still being talked about so that's an element that we've tried to use to separate ourselves and we take a lot of pride in that."
The duo also spoke about their favourite WWE era, the locker room resembling an arcade, being unhappy with their ratings in WWE 2k17, and more. Check out the interview here
Source: NDTV Gadgets 360