Former WWE Superstar Lana, known in the real world as CJ Perry, was recently interviewed on The Man Cave Chronicles to promote her new film and the reality TV series ‘The Surreal Life’.
Lana spent 8 years in WWE before being released in June 2021. The 37-year-old is married to All Elite Wrestling star Miro, who wrestled as Rusev in WWE. CJ Perry is in the recently released movie ‘WIFELIKE’ and you can check out the trailer below.
Lana On How Acting Helped Her WWE Career & How She Impressed Dusty Rhodes
CJ Perry explained on The Man Cave Chronicles that she actually started off as an actor and as a dancer in her career before signing with WWE in 2013.
“I actually started off in acting. I started off in Hollywood. So, I think I have a different journey than 99% of people in wrestling. I started off as a professional dancer as a ballerina in Russia. I moved to Los Angeles when I was like 18 years old, coming back from Florida State and then Hollywood, I was just diving into it. Dancing on a lot of different shows and movies, like Pitch Perfect.”
CJ noted that acting helped her accelerate a lot quicker in WWE and shared how she was able to impressive Dusty Rhodes in NXT.
Acting really helped me accelerate a lot quicker in WWE because I was basically able to build characters with words. That is what acting taught me, and I got signed in 2013, started in July.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Glow, but one of the characters who plays the Russian, she would come in with like five different character pitches. That was literally what I was doing in developmental.
I would come to Dusty Rhodes and I’m like ‘here I have seven different character pitches, this is one poster with all the different ideas and catchphrases and costumes’.
In promo class, I would come with like five different people, we would have this huge elaborate scene that they had really never seen before.
Because most people in developmental come up there and just do a promo, you know? I’m like directing five people and just kind of doing the most. Dusty Rhodes was always really impressed with my creativity, ambition, and work ethic.
I was really lucky, a month later I was paired with my husband (Miro) at the time he was going by Rusev. And we got paired as ‘the big bad Russians’.
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit The Man Cave Chronicles with a H/T to SEScoops for the transcription.