Freddie Prinze Jr. Recalls Vince McMahon Testing Him On His First Day With WWE
In the debut episode of his podcast Wrestling With Freddie, Freddie Prinze Jr. opened up about what his career was like working behind the scenes as a writer for WWE. The star of films like "She's All That" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" recounted how when he was offered a contract, he preferred stock over monetary income.
"They sent me a contract, and I don't want to throw out exact numbers because I don't know if their business is public or not. So we'll say it was $250,000 to write for them and it wasn't a number that they were going to budge. And so I said, 'You can keep all that money and give me stock. I'll just take stock in the company and bet on myself, right?' Because I was just dumb, and against my manager's advice, that's what I did and signed the contract," Prinze Jr. stated. "And the deal was for me to travel to every single Monday Night RAW and every single — shot on Tuesday but airing on Thursday was the day of SmackDown back then — so we would shoot RAW and SmackDown and I would be at all of those tapings and be in the office every single week."
Once he arrived for his first day with the company, Freddie was first introduced to his superior, Michael Hayes. The "Fabulous Freebird" made sure Freddie understood exactly what his job entailed as a writer.
"So I get there, I'm super excited and I meet my superior, Michael P.S. Hayes, and yes, the P.S. stands for 'pure sexy'. So Michael, who has seen it all, now has to deal with this Hollywood guy coming into his writer's room and he's supposed to teach me the wrestling business, right? And I'm supposed to write better scripts, and nobody has been told anything about the other person. So I get in there, I have my meeting with him and he's awesome," Freddie recalled. "He couldn't have been cooler to me. He had just been in trouble with the company is what I was told, so he was kind of humbled a little bit and maybe that's why he was nice. But Michael and I, by the time I left, we were really, really tight.
"So he kind of breaks it down for me and says, 'Here's what you're going to have to do. Here's how many wrestlers you have on the TV roster that are going to be working, and you have to give me four weeks of stories for all of them. And most of the time, they're not going to go through because there's not going to be enough time in the show, but that's your job no matter what. I said, 'Cool if that's my job, that's my job.' While I'm having the meeting with him, they knock on his door and say, 'Vince wants to see Freddie in his office.' And Michael's like, 'You need to go.' So I get up and go, 'What the hell is this?'"
Freddie then met with Vince McMahon and was introduced to another writer named Brian. But Brian wasn't a huge fan of Freddie initially because his arrival called for a re-writing of the Monday Night RAW script.
"So I go to Vince's office and there's another dude sitting there named Brian. And I sit on the other side, and Vince shows me the Monday Night RAW script and he says, 'Brian, this is Freddie. Freddie, this is Brian.' I said, 'Hey, man, it's nice to meet you.' Brian says, 'Hey, man, it's nice to meet you.' And Brian is looking wearily at me, alright? It's like all side-eye, he's like, 'What is — who is this guy?' And I'm sitting there like, 'What am I doing here? Who am I?' So, Vince shows me the script and goes, 'Brian, Freddie's here to help out with all the scripts and the dialogue. I'm going to have to send you back to the drawing board on this one.' He hadn't even read it, okay?" Prinze Jr. remembered. "Brian visibly and audibly snaps a number 2 pencil in half upon hearing this; he snapped a lot of pencils. And he goes, 'Okay' and his big sigh, and he grabs the script. And Vince looks at me and kind of smiles, and I'm literally like, 'This is a test, like, he's going to pit me against these guys and see if I can freaking take it.' This is who this guy is, right? So I'm like, 'Alright,' and I don't mind the challenge."
Freddie Prinze Jr. tried to apologize and give Brian a proper greeting, but the former WWE writer wasn't much interested at the time. He then remembered how Michael Hayes joked with him about how his ideas were rarely going to make it to television.
"I catch up to him and I say, 'Hey, man, that's just a terrible way to just have to meet. I'm so sorry, I'm not here to re-write your stuff.' And he goes, 'This is because of you, man!' Just straight up, all cards are on the table right away. And I was like, 'Oh no! This guy hates me!' Now, he did, but by the time I left, Brian and I were really tight too. So, I'm sitting there just like, 'Wow, they literally threw me in the fire on day one.' So then I go back into the writer's room and Michael Hayes goes, 'How was your meeting?' And he's got this huge grin because he knows, like, this is a routine for Vince," Prinze Jr. said. "Because I wasn't the first Hollywood writer that they had there. They brought in writers from USA TV shows all the time. We're going to get into those in some future episodes, but now I go, 'Yeah, yeah, everything's fine.' So then he goes, 'So are you ready to work on some storylines that are going to get cut every week or not?!' And I literally was like, I sat there, I sat down, I opened my computer and I started writing."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Wrestling With Freddie with an h/t to Wrestling Inc.