Santino Marella discusses his rumored sitcom that never saw the light of day.
Throughout his time with WWE, Marella, also known as Anthony Carelli, was featured as a comedy wrestler. Among other highlights, he had an odd couple storyline with Beth Phoenix, and he used The Cobra as his finisher. Marella also won the "MIss WrestleMania" Battle Royal at WrestleMania 25 by dressing up as Santina Marella. He enjoyed some success in the ring, as he won the WWE Intercontinental Championship, and the WWE United States Championship, but his WWE run remains memorable for his comedic segments. For this reason, fans have often wondered whether WWE planned to do more with him in this regard.
In an interview with Steve Fall for WrestlingNewsCo, Marella discussed the rumored sitcom he was set to be involved with during his time with WWE. He recalled how he had pitched one, and it would have been called "Somebody Loves Santino". The show would have been about his "home life" with Phoenix, and while Vince McMahon liked the idea, a number of issues prevented it from happening.
“Yeah, so what happened was I pitched a sitcom. I think I did, I think I was one episode. I kind of wrote it and there was Beth Phoenix and what was it called… ‘Somebody Loves Santino’ and it was just basically like Beth Phoenix, like our home life. So I got some of the guys from online to do some editing and add some canned laughter, and I waited around one night after Raw, and I’m outside Vince’s office and I gave him the CD and told him [about the] idea that I had. He watched it and [told me that they were gonna do it]. So then he assigned a writer to actually do like a real pilot, a real three episodes, but there was like this tragedy of errors like the writer got Lyme Disease, and the writer broke his hip and then the writer’s father died and you know, this guy’s trying to put together three funny episodes. One episode was funny, a couple episodes were funny. One was horrible. When we put together the WWE a little bit higher budget pilots, they just weren’t funny and [they decided against doing it.] But the original one that I did, I thought was better. So we had a little bit of a difference of opinion, Brian Gewirtz and I. He wanted to do a little bit of like a Curb Your Enthusiasm-type camera work, I wanted pure Disney canned laughter with the standard sitcom backdrop with the stairs on an angle. I wanted it to be for kids, and he wanted it to be I guess for a little bit of an older audience. It really never got going," Marella said.
Anthem Wrestling recently filed to trademark for the name "Santino Marella." More information is available here.
In a recent interview, Marella stated that his in-ring wrestling days are behind him, but he enjoys doing commentary. Check out his comments here.
Marella also discussed his daughter, NXT star Arianna Grace. Click here to see what he had to say.
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