Terri Runnels made her debut in WWE as Marlena, and she was a recent guest on the “Stories With Brisco & Bradshaw” podcast to discuss the character’s origin.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On coming up with the character: “[I asked myself] what is it that they are missing in [WWE]? I thought to myself, ‘We’ve got Scary Sherri [Martel], we’ve got cheerleader pom-pom Sunny, Dustin is doing this character; what is it that they are missing?’ So, the whole character of Goldust was missing this component, that I thought they were missing, which is this amazing character of the old-school Hollywood.”
On pitching the character to Vince McMahon: “I call the office and I get a phone call back from Pat [Patterson] and this is in December of ’95. I told him my idea and it was kind of the obligatory ‘yeah, good girl, but yeah, mhmm-mhmm, we’re not interested, but thanks so much.’”
On finding out character was greenlit: “Dustin said, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘What? What? Why do you keep asking me what I’m doing?’ He’s like, ‘Pack your bags, they want to do your idea.’ That’s where Marlena came to fruition and came to be.”
On her first meeting with Vince McMahon about the character: “I didn’t care. I had been around presidents, princes, poppers, porn stars; I was not shy to be around anyone, so I didn’t care, no big deal. Told him what my idea was, and I told him I will either go to the ring with a glass of wine or a cigar.”
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