Baron Corbin has had several character tweaks throughout his WWE career, and he recently addressed the potential risks of character changes on WWE’s “After the Bell” podcast.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On taking risks as a performer: “There’s always that fear with everything you do. I mean, with what I’m doing now, I’ve abandoned everything. I’m burning the past, burning the ships. Graves, you talked about it. You gave me this line and this mindset of ‘burn the ships’ and explained to me what it meant. This is hats off to you because you brought this to me and said it pertained to where I was at because we had conversations that were very real, not a part of this wrestling world, but very real as friends, as to ‘What’s next, what am I doing?’”
On the importance of confidence in his role: “[Confidence] is everything. We are an entertainment company and our job is to portray characters that are sometimes not necessarily ours. Happy Corbin, Constable Corbin, you took me from a motorcycle bada** to a corporate a**hole. I had to switch modes. And you have to find that in you and you have to make it believable. The talented ones can do that. That’s why I think I did a good job with those. I made those characters believable. I made what I did in the ring and backstage and during my entrance believable. People bought in. They hated me for it.”
On making the character switches feel authentic: “So you have to have confidence no matter what you’re doing. When you get to do it when it’s kind of coming out of your brain and you’re working with somebody, and you’re sitting down in a room. Again, instead of just being handed a piece of paper saying, ‘Here’s what we’re going to say today,’ it’s ‘What do you want to say? What do you feel? Why do you want to say that?’ And you put it in your own words and it draws that true emotion from the gut. You’re no longer acting. You’re out there being as real as it is.
“I think anybody who’s had the success that I’ve had, or the success of a professional athlete, or a WWE superstar already has that confidence, that swagger to walk out. It’s taking all of the things you’re tasked to do and making that believable. But when you’re making your own stuff, you don’t have to make it believable because it’s as raw as it can be. It is true emotion.”