Evan Husney discusses what he believes makes for an easy episode of Dark Side of the Ring.
Entering its sixth season, Dark Side of the Ring has developed a rhythm for sharing stories about the less-glamorous side of professional wrestling. However, the show sometimes tells stories about some of the most beloved wrestlers.
Speaking with Sean Ross Sapp, series producer Evan Husney cited the episodes about John "Earthquake" Tenta, Leon "Vader" White, and Owen Hart as good examples of easy episodes to make because the family was on board with the idea, and their peers had good things to say about them.
"Easiest is actually harder to remember than the hard than the hard ones," Husney explained. "Sometimes with an episode like John Tenta or an episode like Vader—well, John Tenta is a really good example because he's so loved. He's one of these guys like Owen Hart, where you can't find anybody to say a bad thing about them. You just can't. So when you have someone like that, that makes it extremely easy to put together, especially when you can make one phone call to the family, which always is the first phone call for us. If the family embraces the idea and is passionate about the idea, then you know everything else is going to fall into place because all the other subjects are gonna want to do this for the family and they're gonna wanna see it happen.
"That's when you know you have something that's ‘easy to put together’ from a story standpoint," he explained. "Because let's be honest, the access to these stories and getting access to these stories is the hardest part. It's the hardest part about any of it—doing the interviews, the reenactments, the editing, editing is challenging, but anything else, it pales in comparison to just assembling the cast for who is gonna be interviewed for these episodes Vader's a similar story. It's like his family's super passionate to tell the story, really was thrilled at us reaching out wanting to do it, and so when you know that you have that support, you know, it can be put together quite easily for the most part. Not all families we've reached out to are it goes that easy without naming names. But I think that's probably the easier ones, the ones that just come off the top of my head, you know?"
Learn more about Husney's take on what makes for a good Dark Side of the Ring episode here.
Season 6 of Dark Side of the Ring began on Tuesday, March 25. Check out the full lineup of topics here.
Check out the full interview with Evan Husney, which is embedded at the top of this page.
