Looking back on a gimmick that was shelved before it got off the ground, Tenille Dashwood (formerly known as Emma in WWE) said that the Emmalina character did not fit her at all, and believes that is why it got scrapped.
Dashwood discussed the Emmalina character, and why it did not work, during an appearance on the Killing The Town podcast -- her first interview since being released from WWE last fall. One of the hosts of Killing The Town, Lance Storm, also trained Dashwood at his wrestling school in Calgary.
Last February, Emma made her re-debut on Raw after 17 weeks of vignettes hyping the Emmalina gimmick, portrayed as a fashion model-esque persona. The debut segment ended, however, with her dropping the character and going back to her normal Emma character.
Storm asked Dashwood if she was ever told by WWE writers where the Emmalina character was headed.
She responded as follows:
"No. I wish I had more of a say. I don't know, I guess there was an idea to it and they kind of realized along the way that wasn't me. That wasn't for me at all. I mean, I'm just not a diva, you know? I'm not like that at all. And I just want to wrestle. So I think they kind of realized that along the way or something like that and just were like, let's just have her be Emma and have her be herself and we were able to bring that back around."
Dashwood showed some dissatisfaction with how she was being used creatively toward the end of her time in WWE, criticizing the creative team in a tweet last summer.
