Freddie Prinze Jr. recalls refusing to write for Snooki leading up to WrestleMania 27 in 2011.
Freddie Prinze Jr. was a writer for WWE during a brief period of time where The Miz was WWE Champion and WWE was faced with one of its first WrestleManias without the likes of Shawn Michaels and Batista. heading into WrestleMania 27, Shawn Michaels was going into a WrestleMania weekend where he would be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and spent WrestleMania 27 watching the event from the audience with a Flip camera.
Inside the ring that evening, Alberto Del Rio challenged Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship and what would be Edge’s last match for 9 years, The Rock would interfere in the main event between The Miz and John Cena, and Snooki would team with Trish Stratus and John Morrison against LayCool and Dolph Ziggler.
That WrestleMania also saw Zack Ryder sing Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ in front of Snoop Dogg before being hit in the head with a coconut by Rowdy Roddy Piper.
Freddie Prinze Jr. was okay writing that segment but he wanted no part of writing any of the segments involving Snooki and now, he explains why on his podcast, Wrestling With Freddie
First, Freddie spoke about how hectic WrestleMania can be when you're working as part of the creative staff during this wild week.
"[WrestleMania] literally defines the WWE in Vince's mind, maybe it's in some others. But it is the show. Because it is the show that made the company so he cares and he cares a lot. You can accuse him of caring too much, but you could accuse him of that every single week," said Freddie. "Like we all overthink ourselves with the things we're passionate about all the time, you, me, Vince McMahon. But with this, it's a different beast, and it makes you crazy. So this is day one, this is Saturday's production meeting. and we're rewriting the entire show basically. Vince wants to have Snoop Dogg Snoop come in and we have to write in a segment for Snoop Dogg."
"'Freddie!'," Freddie said in a voice mimicking Vince McMahon's. "'You're gonna write the Snoop Dogg segment.' 'Alright, what are you looking for man?' 'Whatever, just write something. Oh, and you're gonna write the Morrison segment with Trish and Snooki.' I go, 'What?' He says, 'You're doing a Snooki segment,' and he's not smiling. I'm like, 'Yo, man, I'm not doing the Snooki segment. Like that's not happening, man. You tried to get me to do this against Michelle McCool another time and I told you 'no,' I'm not doing that. I got four segments, man. I'm not adding that one if you want me to add that one.' He goes, 'Aw, c'mon... Alright, we'll just get somebody to write it.' This basically means someone not in the room is gonna have to write it and then direct that segment, but I sure as hell wasn't gonna do it, man."
Freddie Prinze explains that he was not a fan of the Jersey Shore and doesn't like reality shows because he feels like it takes jobs away from scriptwriters. He does admit, however, that he is sure Snooki is a good person herself.
"I didn't like the idea when they first brought it up. I fought against it in the room. Because the Jersey Shore, I think, is the show that she was on. It was big back then. But I'm not a reality TV dude. In fact, I'm like, anti-reality TV, because that takes jobs away from scriptwriters that I know and like a lot. I would rather them be working and then the industry likes reality shows so much because they can make it for one-tenth of the cost of a scripted show. So that gets rid of more scripted shows, which means more of my writer friends are broke. So that's why I was so against that at the time, right? It was just like, 'she's the enemy.' I'm sure she's lovely. That was my soapbox that I was standing on."
In the past, Freddie Prinze has explained how he ended up back in WWE and also spoke about Vince McMahon not knowing what RoboCop is. Learn more here.
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