Freddie Prinze Jr. On How His Backstage WWE Role Evolved
During a recent interview with PEOPLE, WWE mega-fan and Hollywood actor, Freddie Prinze Jr., opened up about how his relationship with his late grandmother and how she inspired his continued work with pro wrestling. This includes his new podcast called WWFreddie — Wrestling with Freddie from iHeartMedia's My Culture Network debuting next Wednesday.
At a WrestleMania years ago, Prinze Jr. was in the backstage area, speaking with a group of WWE employees about his love for pro wrestling. The WWE employees encouraged Prinze Jr. to speak with Stephanie McMahon and introduced him to her.
"We were just talking wrestling and they liked my philosophies on their business, and they said, 'You should sit down and speak with Stephanie McMahon,' " he said. "And I did."
This led to Stephanie introducing the I Know What You Did Last Summer star to her father and CEO of WWE, Vince McMahon. Prinze Jr. would ultimately receive an opportunity to work with the company he and his grandmother were always fans of.
"I was doing some really good promo work for them, which you would call monologues. I just wrote a lot of the lines that no director ever let me say, and it worked out really well for wrestlers. So I kind of molded from that into kind of an acting coach and helping them develop their own monologues, or promos, and helping them break down other people's dialogue. Best case scenario, I was teaching them how to write for themselves to sort of take that third voice out of the equation," Prinze Jr. adds.
One of Prinze Jr.'s closest friends real life friends is the current "King" of WWE, Xavier Woods. He intends on having King Woods on the show as one of the first guests.
"I love him to death. He's a brother," he says. "I'd lie for him in court. If he needed to get out of the country, I'd get him $100,000 and a plane ticket in under an hour. That's how much I love the guy."
Freddie Prinze Jr.'s wife and fellow co-star in I Know What You Did Last Summer, Sarah Michelle Gellar, worked with legendary WWE superstar, The Rock, in the 2006 film Southland Tales. Apparently, Prinze Jr.'s grandmother took the WWF storyline of Rock being a corporation sellout so personally, that she was mad at Gellar for working with him.
"I remember my wife did a movie with Dwayne Johnson, and Dwayne's [WWE] character, the Rock, turned his back on the people and he became what was known as the corporate champion, and all the fans hated him for it," he tells PEOPLE. "And when my grandma found out that Sarah was doing a movie with him, she got pissed off at my wife for siding with the corporation and not the people.
"She was genuinely upset and genuinely mad at her, I think till the day she died," he adds with a chuckle. "But that's how serious [she] took it."
WWFreddie — Wrestling with Freddie premieres later this month on Nov. 17 with new episodes airing every Wednesday.