17 hours Ago By Alex Weprin
The first episode of on Jan. 6 was, in the words of a top executive at the company, perhaps the most important episode of the show’s 32-year history. The WWE a 10 year, $5 billion deal with the global streaming giant last year, and the episode was meant to be a grand introduction to the platform, with Netflix stars and executives in the crowd, and an opening monologue from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
And for the on Netflix, the company delivered a payoff for fans, and a storyline that it hoped would introduce the stakes at play to the new Netflix audience. Roman Reigns, the six-time former WWE champion and founder of the “Bloodline,” had been banished from the faction he founded, with his rival Solo Sikoa assuming control. Their rivalry had been boiling over for months.
Normally, it would culminate in a main event at a WWE flagship, like Wrestlemania, or SummerSlam. Instead, they settled their score at the very beginning of the Netflix era. And when Reigns entered the Intuit Dome that Monday evening, he was flanked by his “wise man,” the manager Paul Heyman.
Clad in a tailored suit, Heyman grasped his hands as in prayer next to the ring, facing Reigns as though he was a god. Pat McAfee, the sports host and WWE commentator, set the scene as Reigns entered the ring: “Flanked by Paul Heyman, greatest manager in the history of the business,” McAfee told the streaming audience at home. “Billions at the box office under his leadership and counsel.
” In a brutal extended match, Reigns defeated Sikoa, regaining the title of “Tribal Chief.” And just like that, the Netflix era was officially underway, with a match engineered by Heyman and the WWE creative team. “Before COVID, it was a boutique industry, it was niche, it was a guilty pleasure, and then it became a multi-billion dollar guilty pleasure and a multi-billion dollar boutique industry, and now, with the distribution on Netflix, it’s no longer boutique, now it’s certified main street,” says Heyman.
Or as Paul “Triple H” Levesque, the chief creative officer for the WWE says: “There’s no saying among kids ‘ABC and chill.’ Netflix and chill is a thing.” “It’s because that’s where they are, and it’s great for us to be in that environment with these young folks and continue to grow the business in that direction,” Levesque adds.
Making the WWE relevant to young audiences is an obsession for the company, per multiple industry sources. It’s a dynamic similar to professional sports leagues. Cash from TV and streaming deals is great, but if what you produce doesn’t matter to the next generation, there is an expiration date.
It’s in that context that the decision to have Heyman – by his admission not a spring chicken – be a centerpiece of the upcoming video game (Reigns is the cover star, with Heyman watching on), all the more surprising. “I transcend the boundaries of demographics, because I’m blessed enough to be able to appeal cradle to grave, and that’s because that’s always been my goal, because that’s WWE’s goal in demographics, the goal is cradle to grave,” Heyman says with a smile. Heyman is an unusual figure in the entertainment world.
He is involved in crafting storylines and helping wrestlers create their characters, but he isn’t a writer or executive. And he is one of the most prolific on-air talents that the company has in its stable, but he isn’t a wrestler. On camera, Heyman plays a supporting role: “Even if the scene is only with me, I’m there to advance the story and explain it to you in sound bites that hopefully go viral so that more people can have access to it,” he says.
He’s something like a John Williams of the WWE. Just as Williams’ music can make Darth Vader that much more ominous, or Luke Skywalker that much more heroic with subtle scoring notes, Heyman’s job on the mic is to make the good guys look that much better, or the bad guys that much more evil. And to do so in a way that explains the storyline for viewers at home.
“It’s his ability, while he’s a character in the show storyline-wise, to look at things from a business standpoint and say, these are the things we should be doing, this is how we should get that talent over,” Levesque says. But while Heyman has become a staple on-air, it’s off-air where he is perhaps most impactful. Heyman’s role on-air is as a manager, a counsel, a “wise man.
” Backstage he plays a similar role, a counsel to established talent like Reigns, and a stable of up and coming talent that the WWE wants to help develop. “As a top guy, there’s a billion different things you’ve got to worry about on game day,” Reigns says. “And there’s a lot of people pulling you in a lot of different directions.
A lot of people want this and that, and he can become that filter that makes it really easy to go out there on game day and perform at the highest level.” For developing talent, Heyman is a sounding board for character development and working the mic, a skill he has been honing since he ran Extreme Championship Wrestling through the 1990s. “Paul was a genius in ECW of hiding people’s flaws and showing their strengths, even if that strength was just an entrance,” Levesque says.
Levesque cites another talent that Heyman has been coaching as an example: Bron Breakker, who had been on the WWE’s development brand NXT before joining the main roster last year. “He’s a young guy, incredibly athletic, great character, he’s a sponge,” Levesque says of Breakker. “I have Heyman spend a lot of time with him to help develop him with his promos, to help develop his character, to help push him in a direction.
Then Paul talks to me and talks to the writers about where do we want to take that, and then he’s the conduit for where we want to go to that talent.” Reigns may be the best example of that (Heyman calls it “the greatest disruption performance-wise in this business since ECW.”) Reigns character, “The Tribal Chief,” was created in part due to the WWE’s pivot amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“Everyone else around us looked at the limitations that COVID had placed on the performance, because the whole concept of pro wrestling is interactivity with the audience, and there’s no live audience,” Heyman says. “So you’re either a lead singer without a band or a band without a lead singer..
. we came into it from the mindset of ‘these are not limitations, these are opportunities.’” Wrestlers play to the crowd when speaking in the ring, the cameras are just there to capture it.
COVID changed that. Reigns and Heyman realized that in a silent arena, the move was to play directly to the camera, and that you could speak softly. The Tribal Chief was a character, Heyman says, inspired by a cinema classic.
“When Roman Reigns and I came up with the character, I had Roman study , because the initial launch of the tribal chief to me was Colonel Kurtz. [Marlon] Brando,” Heyman says. “All things on the island of relevancy flow through the tribal chief Roman Reigns, we all rely on him.
We all look to him for the answer, and at the end of the movie, when Martin Sheen has fulfilled the directive of the United States military’s covert operation, to terminate Kurtz’s command with extreme prejudice, he opens up the book written by Kurtz. He sees what Kurtz has written, ‘drop the bomb.’ “The burden of leadership, the burden of the worship, the burden of the expectations, the burden of, let’s call it the acknowledgement, is so heavy on Kurtz that he resents everyone around him for relying on him to this extent, though his power and his entire character is designed for that very purpose,” Heyman adds.
Reigns would go on to a history-making title run, holding the WWE championship for two years, becoming one of wrestling’s greatest villains, before finally passing the torch to Cody Rhodes at last year’s Wrestlemania. “We walked into Wrestlemania weekend with the knowledge that this was the time for the chapter of Roman Reigns as champion to end, we had taken it as far as we possibly could, we needed new things to sink our teeth into,” Heyman says. “It was the longest heavyweight title reign in WWE in 40 years, and with good reason, it’s very difficult to keep the champion’s run that interesting for that long.
It’s just a different era. But we managed to do it, and we knew, ‘let’s get out while the get was good,’ and it was time to anoint Cody. We had a two year storyline with Cody Rhodes, and this is where the payoff had to happen.
” Now, with Wrestlemania 41 a little more than a month away, the next phase of Reigns’ character arc is set to get underway. The detail-focused story arcs also brought with it another innovation from Heyman: Recognizing how social media has changed how wrestling can work. Just as Reigns’ subtle performances during COVID changed how wrestlers can develop their characters in-ring, social platforms have changed how fans engage with the show.
Creators on TikTok and YouTube post reaction videos every week, and amateur sleuths dissect backstage scenes for clues about upcoming storylines or character developments. “I openly invite easter eggs and conspiracy theories in every scene that we do, and we intentionally drop them in there, so that people pick up on it and then develop their own conspiracy theories as to which way the story can go,” Heyman says, noting that he often hopes his on-air promos go viral. Those easter eggs and conspiracy theories are now dissected daily across TikTok and Instagram, podcasts and YouTube videos, with the WWE betting that it will translate to more and more people around the world opening the Netflix app on Monday night.
“What’s the difference between a Travis Scott concert and a Frank Sinatra concert,” Heyman asks rhetorically. “There are certain things that don’t change, right? You’re still performing in front of screaming fans. You’re still performing in front of a rabid live performance-affirming audience.
You’re still performing in front of people who paid to see you do what you do better than anybody else on the face of the planet. “In that regard, it’s still the same, however, we now have to offer more,” he adds. “We now have to take those performances from the couch and bring that soap opera to play out.
Sometimes it’s all physical, so it’s very Shakespeare. And sometimes it’s all words.” THR Newsletters Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day More from The Hollywood Reporter.
