April 27, 2022 • 27 mins
Welcoming Freddie Prinze Jr. to The Pod Club! I’m sure you have heard of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment, in case you haven’t) but have you heard of WWF? Wrestling with Freddie is Freddie Prinze Jr.’s new show where he sits down with other wrestling fanatics to pull back the curtain on what makes those matches so entertaining. Yes, the 90’s heartthrob now has a podcast about wrestling. Host Jo Pizza sits down with Freddie to learn how he became a wrestling fanatic. It’s a passion that starts in Puerto Rico, led him to his dream job as a writer for the WWE, and finally onto this very podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have a lot of a lot of wrestlers, but
it's because everybody that works there has them. So you
just kind of fall into it, right like any any
employee at the w w E when they get out
of a meeting with Vince and speak to you everything
that Vince told them, they tell you in the Vince
McMahon voice. The girls do it, the guys do it.
(00:22):
They fall into the cadence. You'll just be telling me like, yeah,
but remember like Randy said, he'd be the inspiration of
and you just all of a sudden, it's normal, and
nobody calls you on it, nobody talks about it. Is
just how everyone speaks there. And I never did it
before I worked there, and I've never been able to
stop doing it since I worked there. Podcast Welcome back
(00:49):
to the pod Club Today. We have a very special
Podclub episode about wrestling, professional wrestling that is. And I'll
give you three guesses to figure out who that was
in our opener. No, it is not Randy Savage, for
Rick Flair or The Rock. Yeah, I know a lot
of wrestler's names. It is none other than Freddie Prince Jr.
(01:14):
Yes nineties heart throb Freddie Prince Jr. He's got a
podcast now, and it just might be the most unexpected
celebrity podcast that I've ever listened to. I truly did
not see this one coming. No, Freddie is not making
a rewatch show for I Know What You Did last
summer or all of the Scooby Doo movies which I
(01:34):
would listen to. Like I said, this is a show
about wrestling and it's called Wrestling with Freddie. What's up? Everybody?
Welcome back to another episode of Wrestling with Freddy. The
WWF is back and I'm back with you. I hope
you're ready to hear some WrestleMania stories. Wow, stuffing up
(01:58):
for the micy of Wrestling with Freddie Freddie Prince Junior.
In fact, Freddie is actually a big w w E fan,
and he even wrote for the show. Freddie has a
ton to share and so many great stories about how
wrestling has factored into his life with his family, as
(02:21):
an actor and as a writer. I was very surprised
to learn. I'm like, oh, you have a podcast about
professional wrestling. That is not what I expected your podcast
to be about. What did you think it was going
to be about? I don't know. I mean, every every
(02:44):
person who has ever worked in Hollywood for any amount
of time now has a podcast about themselves. It's just
that was an option. Bet it was yeah, tell me
the options. Did they come to you and be like,
do you just want to talk about you? Freddie Prince Jr.
I had a friend who worked at my Heart who
heard me on ESPN radio years ago. They would have
(03:05):
me come on and I would call in, and eventually
I started going in the studio and eventually when someone
was sick, they had me like co host the show
a little bit. And so she kept saying, oh, you
should do a podcast, You should do a podcast, And
I was like, I do one with a stand up comedian.
He's my best friend, Josh Wolf. He makes me laugh.
I don't have to say anything and he does all
the talking and it's the greatest podcast in the world.
(03:27):
And she said, how much money have you made? And
I said, well, none, We've never tried to make money.
But it I just like hanging down with my friend.
And about a year later and I got crazy during
the pandemic, and so he moved and we killed the
podcast sadly, and uh I ran into Amy and she said,
you know, what about that podcast, And I said, yeah,
(03:47):
let's let's talk about it. Let's see what happens. And
they sent me some options, right, and one was like, hey,
you could get one of your co stars from each
of your movies and you guys could talk about the movie.
And I said, well, that would be hard because I've
only seen three of the movies that I've ever been in,
so I don't know, like, wait, wait, I'm I'm interrupting you.
(04:08):
Which ones have you seen I have? That's gonna be
hard too. I saw one called Brooklyn Rules, which they
changed the no, they changed the name to Brooklyn Rules.
That was with Scott Cohn and Jerry Ferrara. I've seen
the first I know you did last summer, and I've
seen a little independent movie called The House of Yes
(04:28):
with Parker Posey and that's it. Um. So I was like,
I don't know if that would be the best the
best one to talk about. And they sent some other options.
One was like nerdy, like dungeons and dragons kind of
stuff because they saw I had a game channel and
that was interesting to me. And then the last one
was wrestling and I had never considered doing it, but
I remember having done like a few interviews and people saying,
(04:51):
hold on, dude, did I really used to work for
w w E. And the stories that would pop out,
We're just crazy, Like everyone always thought I was lying,
and then they would like ask somebody else who was there,
like a proper and they'd be like, oh, yeah, that's what.
And so they were just wild stories. And I was like,
you know what, maybe it'll be time. I've been gone
for ten years now, maybe it's time to share some
of those stories and my philosophy on the business because
(05:13):
it's it tends to be a lot different than most people's.
So so yeah, So that's how it all came together
and I started doing it and I really had fun
the very first time, and uh, for the first time.
I don't have anyone else to rely on. So it's
been a fun challenge that I've enjoyed. And and I
like telling stories. You know, there's an old saying storyteller's
(05:35):
cutting the wood. I like callous is about as much
as the next guy, So so I like telling stories. Also,
we have to back up for a second, because you
wrote for w w E. Another thing that I was
very surprised to learn about you how the heck did
that happen? You know, I'm still not sure. I know,
(05:57):
I know that I burn out pretty quick with smith
steadiness like I enjoyed when I was young. I really
enjoyed making movies because it was, you know, three months
and now, three months and now, and you make good
relationships and and and you have people that you want
to stick with forever, but there's a stop date. I
(06:18):
think it was Kathleen Turner who said a movie is
a marriage with a guaranteed divorce that everybody's in on um.
And so when I did my TV series about two
thirds through it, I was really feeling it. So I
was burning out on on Hollywood at the time. And
I went to go watch Rick Flair in his retirement
(06:40):
match against Shawn Michaels in Orlando, Florida, and I met
this really awesome lady. She worked for w W E
still does and uh now she's a vice president. And
she said, you need to you need to speak with
Stephanie McMahon because you don't just crap all over the business.
You have like a lot of ideas to fix the
things you don't like. And I was kind of done.
(07:00):
I was I had already walked away from the business.
I didn't make like a big deal out of it.
I didn't think I needed a publicity announcement. I didn't
want to do it anymore. And I love that because
you don't need one. You don't. I always felt like
a grand Jerry McGuire x when when actors did that.
I was always like, why are you telling everyone you're leaving? Like?
It was just always strange to me. So so anyway,
I was like, yeah, whatever, I'll talk to Steph. And
(07:23):
so I went to New York and I took the
train up to Stanford, Connecticut, and I saw the old
Titan Tower building where Hull Cogan used to work out
in the neon in the neon light gym right and
I met Steph and she said the same thing that
that that Proudy said, the Christian prouty, the woman I
met at WrestleMania, And she said, Oh my god, you
(07:44):
need to speak to my dad because you won't be
afraid to say no, but you'll you'll have ideas. And
I said, okay, okay, I'll talk to Vince McMahon. That's awesome. Um.
So I went into his office. We started chatting and
he offered me a job in the room and I said, yeah.
You know, I didn't have a dad grown up. So
the one cryptonite I have is when an old man
(08:05):
calls me son and uh he looked. He goes, well,
I think we could really use you here, son, And
the moment he said that, I was just like, I
haven't even spoken to my wife yet. I was like, yeah, yeah, man,
I could do this. I'll do the job. And we
shook hands right there, and I took the train home
and I called Sarah and I said, Hey, I'm gonna
I'm gonna work for w w E. I'm gonna be
(08:25):
out here in New York a while longer. And she
was there's this like two second pause, and she goes,
you're gonna wrestle in the w w E. What's the
matter with you? I was like, no, no, no, I'm
not gonna be a wrestler. I'm I'm gonna write for
for And she's like, what are you talking about? You're
gonna write and uh? And I did, what's the craziest
storyline you ever wrote? For them? They were all crazy
(08:45):
because your first idea, which is the good one, gets
rejected because they have forty people making decisions there, so
you know, the idea from its infancy is never the
child that you brought into the world, because there's so
many fingerprints on that child. Like it takes a village
to raise a kid, it just takes one writer to
(09:06):
write a scene like you don't need. And it's the
same in movies. People trash wrestling all the time, but
the moment a script gets to an actor to the
to the time it's made, it's a completely different script
half the time because the studio has its notes, and
sometimes that's good and sometimes that's really really bad. You
don't need that many people who have never physically made
(09:28):
a movie putting that much input onto it. Sometimes it works,
but more often than not you end up with some
crazy notes that a writer is struggling to to to
make work. And the same thing in the wrestling business.
We would get to a production day and I would
write what seemed like very simple, straightforward. The talent can
(09:50):
do this based on their skill level. We can get
this over and by the time it's it's showtime, you know,
suddenly they're putting the big show and it dressed up
like Santa Claus in a seat that's gimmick to bring
when he sits in it and they're not going to
tell him, and I'm like, wait, wait a minute, this
was a serious scene between two completely other people. Yeah,
but this will be great. We're going to do this,
And I was like, oh my god, all right. What
(10:11):
I really like about your show is peeling back the
curtain on how much effort and really good writing and
acting coaching goes in behind the scenes of of these shows,
which I think that's and I've I've watched some professional
wrestling my high school boyfriend. I'm a forty one year
(10:31):
old woman, so um, you know, very very familiar with
your early work, Freddie. And also my high school boyfriend
was a big like ravishing Rick Rude Yeah yeah, Recrud
fan and used to make me watch so much professional
wrestling in the basement that I took. I took someone
else to prom but I but I know, I know
(10:52):
a little bit of a language. I really liked when
you talked about how you got first got into let's
for you first got into watching wrestling, that it was
for me, it was my high school boyfriend. For you,
it was your grand Yeah, she's hard, yeah, and she
and she thought it was real. So she drives up
(11:16):
to San Juan. She had this great Cadillac right and
she gets a treatment man. And I didn't know anything
about my dad at this point, so I just thought
my grandma was like the governor of Puerto Rico or something.
So she gets to park right up front and this
guy sits outside and he says, I'll watch the car.
I didn't know that. Men, he was gonna sit there
the whole time. When we came out, he was in
the same spot. And the dude watched the car. It
(11:39):
was she had. She had cloud. So we go and
we get right up close and uh, we're there really
early too, by the way, and they're putting a cage
around the ring. And I'm, you know, eight years old,
a third grader, and I asked my grandma said, oh,
it's a steel cage match. And you didn't tell me
it's a steel cage match. She said, no, that's to
keep the wrestlers safe. I said, what do you mean
(12:00):
she goes to keep them safe from us? I said what?
And I didn't really understand until the show started and
the fans. Any food that was brought was thrown all
over these guys and all they're doing is walking to
the ring and it's not even a steel kid. They didn't,
not one wrestler used the cage as a weapon, like
there's any regular matches. But I'm watching the crowd almost
(12:26):
as much. I'm like excited just talking about this right now,
like shaking for real, like adrenaline. I'm watching the crowd
as much as I am the matches because this was
it was a little scary for me. And uh so
we go back home and we're watching wrestling, and said,
did you like it? Oh? I loved it. I loved it,
and I would wrestle with her. She was the first
person ever hit me with a with a Rick Flair
(12:47):
chop and she hit hard. She's a tough Puerto Rican girl.
She used to wrestle with us. So yeah, so she's past,
she's passed on. Now she's wrestling in having Hell or
wherever she ended up. She was hardcore man like my
mom used to send me out there, and my grandma
(13:08):
didn't like my mom, and by the time she died,
not a lot of people like my grandma. She was
a tough old woman and she loved her son. And
when she lost her son, which no parents should have
to go through it messed her up bat so she
could never speak ill of my father and she wouldn't
allow anyone to speak ill of him, even if it
was honest and truthful. Um So, wrestling was a big
(13:30):
way her and I clicked and we sat down and
we watched a match, and I had never seen a
wrestling match, and to see an adult legitimize it so
much made it even more real to me. So even
if something didn't look a real I'm like, yo, if
she's buying it, it's my job to buy it too,
because that's a grown up. What they tell you is
the truth, or so we think. And uh so, so
(13:55):
she took me to my first match. After we watched
for for a while. Um I, I started watching over
a Christmas break and then summer vacation when I went
back out there. She took me to my first match
in San Juan, which was like an hour drive from
where she lived, in a little town called And my
first taste of a live match was a match in
(14:15):
Puerto Rico, which is not the same kind of match
that I've experienced anywhere else in the world. Not that
I've seen a match in every country, but I've seen
them all over, and the Puerto Ricans were crazy. They
were throwing their their their beers on the bad guys.
They call them heels, um, we call them antagonists or baddies.
(14:35):
They were throwing their food, harder money that they spent
their harder money, food that wasn't even eaten yet. They
were throwing their food out of My Grandma said, sometimes
they throw batteries that the bad guys, that the bad
guys would win. They would try to rush the ring,
and that's why they put in the cage. I'm a kid,
I'm like, am I gonna get trampled? Like? What is
going on? It was really really intense, but it became
(14:56):
more real to me, so much so that in the
sixth grade it was this kid, Ray Garcia, and I
love Ray. That's why I'm saying his name. I'm not
trying to crap on the guy. I feel bad about this,
but he told me that wrestling was fake and that
Rick Flair wasn't wasn't a good fighter. And I didn't
(15:18):
have a dad, so all these men were like father
figures to me, right, So if you spoke ill of
Rick Flair, that was that was your ass. You know,
My godfather was Bob Wall. He didn't teach me how
to throw a football. He taught me how to whip
a quarterback's ass. Like that's the guy to train Bruce
Lee when Bruce came to America. So Ray got punched
(15:38):
in the face. He fell down, and I put him
in Rick Flair's finisher, the figure four leglock, and I
didn't know what it would do, and so when I
pushed down, it broke his ankle at the foot at
the ankle joint, and I felt his I felt a break,
and I felt his book go wobbly, and it freaked
me out and I jumped up. I was like no, like,
(16:00):
oh go, and he's crying and all these kids were like, whoa,
it's real. Oh my god, it's real, and they run
off and told on me, and I got sent home
from school and my mom was like, what did you do?
And he said I was stake and my mom literally like, well,
he knows it's not now, So again, it was legitimized
to me by an adult that it was real. And
I tell that story to let people know how how
(16:21):
prominent wrestling was in my life because I loved all
those characters so much and I only loved the bad guys.
I never liked the good guys because the good guys
played by the rules and they would lose matches because
the bad guy would you know, poke the ref and
the eye and then you know, punched the guy in
the balls and pin him on two three, And I
was like, why these guys get away with whatever they want?
(16:42):
And my mom was strict, so I didn't. So I
always collicked with the bad guys. And that's why I
kind of had the reactions I did as a little boy. Yeah,
(17:18):
you're you're a great storyteller. You made me laugh, But
it's also teaching me things about wrestling and the world
of wrestling in this whole universe that I never knew,
And I like podcasts that that that teach me stuff.
You guys also mentioned on the Macaulay Culkin podcast, like
you know, what was your what was your gateway wrestler,
(17:39):
your gateway storyline, how you first got into wrestling. So
much as you guys discussed your your gateway wrestlers on
this podcast, we like to talk about your gateway podcast,
the podcast that got you listening to podcasts, What podcasts
like really got you to like this medium? Well, it
was really just one and it was a true crime
(18:02):
podcast and it was I don't remember the name of
the of the guy because it wasn't a regular podcast.
It was just a journalist who told a story over
six episodes, and it was about the uh, the senator
in Alaska who's playing vanished and they thought that it
could have been based on some of the decisions he
was going to make in the ways he was going
(18:23):
to vote, that it could have been a hit job.
And so I started listening to that. And I had
always been into like those sexy kind of documentaries, like
the Billy Corbyn type document Cocaine Cowboys and that kind
of stuff, So I didn't even know there were podcasts
in that space. I was literally listened I think too.
(18:43):
I was listening to like Colin Cowherd on I Heart Radio,
I think, is what it was. And there I heard
a commercial for that and I was like, oh, let me,
let me check this out. And I didn't even go
back to Colin Coward. I just binged all six episodes
of this story about this Alaska senator who was lost
in you know, over a strange mountain range in like
(19:05):
western Alaska, and uh, That's kind of what got me in.
And then from there, a lot of stand up comics
had me doing their podcast and I hated listening to
anything I do same way. I don't want to watch
anything I've been in so so, so once I started
doing podcasts with with those guys and girls and and
(19:26):
having fun, I would only do podcasts with comics because
they would just crack me up and it's always a
cool way to reconnect with my father's life and and
that kind of thing. And then I just kind of
got the bug for it after that and seeing how
much fun they have, and so I'm like, man, I'm
gonna do that too. So that's that's all I came from.
I have never heard of this uh pod, this true
(19:47):
crime podcast. I just looked it up. It's missing and
a lot that was the name of it. Close your
eyes picture Alaska. What do you see? Mountains, snow waves,
do you feel cold? Alone? Somewhere in that expanse lies
(20:12):
the wreckage of a missing cessna and the bodies of
four men, including two US Congressmen. Their disappearance on October six,
nine two prompted the largest search in American history, a
search that spanned thirty nine days and covered three and
twenty five thousand square miles. Yet no sign of the
(20:32):
men or they're plane ever surfaced, no oil slick, no wreckage,
nothing ever. This story is one of the great mysteries
of American history, but you've probably never heard of it,
and that's okay. Even in nineteen seventy two, it vanished
(20:53):
from the headlines within weeks. A nation consumed with Watergate
and Vietnam quickly moved on are the families of the
men of Congressman Hail Boggs and Nick Beggett, pilot Don
John's and political aid Russ Brown. It was a slower
process without a wreck There were no definitive answers, no closure.
(21:14):
Eleven children, including the journalist Coke Roberts and future U. S.
Senator Mark Begets, lost their fathers. The description is like
a like a like an eighties graphic novel descript describer,
and it makes me feel like I'm going to read
a comic book instead of listening to a podcast. Also
like it's like Hail Boggs is clear, or that Bruce
(21:39):
will right. It's like it's like Jack mccli needs the
syllable though you're so right, You're so right. So, but
I like that you started doing this comedy podcast because
your dad was a commune. Yeah. Yeah, and that's where
the junior comes. He was also named Freddie, and he
was a big time coming. He had the number one
(22:01):
show in the country in nineteen seventy five. He had
just stolen the Caesar's Palace gig from Bill Cosby. Screw
Bill Cosby. Glad my half probably knew what a piece
of crap he was, and that's why he undercut him
and got the gig. Um. But yeah, so it was
always a way. I mean, I grew up in I
was twelve years old. I was going to comedy clubs.
(22:21):
I wasn't legally allowed to, but all the owners love
my daddy, so they so they would let me in
and I would I would sit in the back. I
would bring spiral notebooks that were meant to be my homework,
and I would write down the comedians jokes as fast
as I could. People like like everybody from Paul Mooney,
Richard Richard Pryor who discovered my dad, so he was
(22:44):
always really good to me. Uh, Elaine Bluesler, Chris Titus,
all these like legends, right and I would write their
jokes down and I would put stars next to the
jokes depending on how loud the audience laughed, like the
thirteen year Judging jokes basically, And years later, in my forties,
(23:05):
I still have all those journals, and I gave one
of them to Chris Titus. I was like, yo, man,
these are jokes you told in and these are how
the audience reacted to it. And he was like, are
you kidding me this? We put this joke on my show,
Titus on Fox Back, and whenever I was like, yeah,
I remember it, So it's It was always a cool
(23:25):
way for me to kind of connect to my pops.
And I've always had a soft spot for for comics
and wrestlers because I feel that's the hardest form of
show business. You know, there's such an instant raw reaction.
If I make a movie, I got nine months to
decide how I feel before you ever tell me whether
you liked it or didn't. And if I'm not pleased
(23:47):
with something, no matter how happy you are, it's not
gonna make me feel any better. And if I'm pleased
with something, no matter how much trash you talk, it
won't make me feel any worse. But with wrestling in comedy,
if they're not laughing, they're not laughing at you and
you and it's instant, and that joke died your match.
(24:07):
If they're not into it, it's it's because of you,
and it's it's instant. Like musicians can't even make this
claim because they know the song. They're not freestyle and
a song up there. So wrestlers in comics freestyle all
the time. And to me, wrestling was always the literal
translation of blood, sweat, and tears on a literal canvas,
(24:30):
and that, to me is the best example of art
and an artist in show business. I don't listen personally
to a ton of comedy podcasts. Can you recommend a
couple that you love that I should be listening to? Yeah,
you should listen to Adam Ray's UM. I think it's
a l n about Last Night. He always has great
(24:50):
guests on there. He just had Sandra Bullock on and
UH and she doesn't do a lot of podcasts and
she killed But that would be the first one that
I wrote you. Sunday Papers is a great one. That's
Brian Fitzpatrick's What Else, Mark Norman and UH and Joe
list have one called to Tuesday Mornings, I think is
(25:13):
what it's called. And then uh, Christa Stefano and sal
Volcano have a one called hey Babe, which is the
stupidest of all of them. And if you're just wanting
to listen to two assholes that are way dumber than
you but will make you laugh, you should listen to that.
It's very funny. A quick refresh. Why do you have
(25:35):
it in a tubbleware? Nobody? It's in just tinfoil, but
I was afraid it was gonna matter. Is legit the
same tubble where I give my five year old daughter
for school every day? What are you saying? Say it again, tubbleware?
Say it again? Slow? Tubbleware, slow, very slow. First say
the first syllable tub wrong. What do you mean? I
thought I caught that you throw? You're throwing bees at me?
(25:59):
What about about Tupperware? Tupper It's chopper. It's tupper, babe,
It always has been, always will be. Yeah, did you
know that pimp? And it was tupper I thought it
was tumberware because it kind of looks like a tub.
You know, that makes total sense. So you're saying, my
whole life, I have a clinical doctor degree in physical therapy.
I've been walking up to people and saying, do you
(26:20):
have tubber? What can I take that home? At some
tubberware tube like flubber, It's tougher. This was awesome. This
was so much fun. Go listen to Wrestling with Freddie.
I am partial to the mccull culkin episode, but there's
plenty of other options out there for you. As a reminder,
(26:44):
the other shows we suggested today are Missing in Alaska
and Hey Babe with Kristy Stephano and sal Vocano. You've
got your wrestling, You've got your crime show, You've got
your comedy. What more do you need? Well, once you
finish those, you're going to need more pod casts. So
I'll see you next week with even more recommendations. Happy listening.
(27:07):
The pod club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our
executive producers are Me Again and Emily Maronoff. Our producers
are Mary Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is
Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional music was composed by
Aaron Kaufman. Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and
(27:28):
special thanks to Nikki Tore. It was just a wonderful
human being who I like to think at the end
of episodes
I have a lot of a lot of wrestlers, but
it's because everybody that works there has them. So you
just kind of fall into it, right like any any
employee at the w w E when they get out
of a meeting with Vince and speak to you everything
that Vince told them, they tell you in the Vince
McMahon voice. The girls do it, the guys do it.
(00:22):
They fall into the cadence. You'll just be telling me like, yeah,
but remember like Randy said, he'd be the inspiration of
and you just all of a sudden, it's normal, and
nobody calls you on it, nobody talks about it. Is
just how everyone speaks there. And I never did it
before I worked there, and I've never been able to
stop doing it since I worked there. Podcast Welcome back
(00:49):
to the pod Club Today. We have a very special
Podclub episode about wrestling, professional wrestling that is. And I'll
give you three guesses to figure out who that was
in our opener. No, it is not Randy Savage, for
Rick Flair or The Rock. Yeah, I know a lot
of wrestler's names. It is none other than Freddie Prince Jr.
(01:14):
Yes nineties heart throb Freddie Prince Jr. He's got a
podcast now, and it just might be the most unexpected
celebrity podcast that I've ever listened to. I truly did
not see this one coming. No, Freddie is not making
a rewatch show for I Know What You Did last
summer or all of the Scooby Doo movies which I
(01:34):
would listen to. Like I said, this is a show
about wrestling and it's called Wrestling with Freddie. What's up? Everybody?
Welcome back to another episode of Wrestling with Freddy. The
WWF is back and I'm back with you. I hope
you're ready to hear some WrestleMania stories. Wow, stuffing up
(01:58):
for the micy of Wrestling with Freddie Freddie Prince Junior.
In fact, Freddie is actually a big w w E fan,
and he even wrote for the show. Freddie has a
ton to share and so many great stories about how
wrestling has factored into his life with his family, as
(02:21):
an actor and as a writer. I was very surprised
to learn. I'm like, oh, you have a podcast about
professional wrestling. That is not what I expected your podcast
to be about. What did you think it was going
to be about? I don't know. I mean, every every
(02:44):
person who has ever worked in Hollywood for any amount
of time now has a podcast about themselves. It's just
that was an option. Bet it was yeah, tell me
the options. Did they come to you and be like,
do you just want to talk about you? Freddie Prince Jr.
I had a friend who worked at my Heart who
heard me on ESPN radio years ago. They would have
(03:05):
me come on and I would call in, and eventually
I started going in the studio and eventually when someone
was sick, they had me like co host the show
a little bit. And so she kept saying, oh, you
should do a podcast, You should do a podcast, And
I was like, I do one with a stand up comedian.
He's my best friend, Josh Wolf. He makes me laugh.
I don't have to say anything and he does all
the talking and it's the greatest podcast in the world.
(03:27):
And she said, how much money have you made? And
I said, well, none, We've never tried to make money.
But it I just like hanging down with my friend.
And about a year later and I got crazy during
the pandemic, and so he moved and we killed the
podcast sadly, and uh I ran into Amy and she said,
you know, what about that podcast, And I said, yeah,
(03:47):
let's let's talk about it. Let's see what happens. And
they sent me some options, right, and one was like, hey,
you could get one of your co stars from each
of your movies and you guys could talk about the movie.
And I said, well, that would be hard because I've
only seen three of the movies that I've ever been in,
so I don't know, like, wait, wait, I'm I'm interrupting you.
(04:08):
Which ones have you seen I have? That's gonna be
hard too. I saw one called Brooklyn Rules, which they
changed the no, they changed the name to Brooklyn Rules.
That was with Scott Cohn and Jerry Ferrara. I've seen
the first I know you did last summer, and I've
seen a little independent movie called The House of Yes
(04:28):
with Parker Posey and that's it. Um. So I was like,
I don't know if that would be the best the
best one to talk about. And they sent some other options.
One was like nerdy, like dungeons and dragons kind of
stuff because they saw I had a game channel and
that was interesting to me. And then the last one
was wrestling and I had never considered doing it, but
I remember having done like a few interviews and people saying,
(04:51):
hold on, dude, did I really used to work for
w w E. And the stories that would pop out,
We're just crazy, Like everyone always thought I was lying,
and then they would like ask somebody else who was there,
like a proper and they'd be like, oh, yeah, that's what.
And so they were just wild stories. And I was like,
you know what, maybe it'll be time. I've been gone
for ten years now, maybe it's time to share some
of those stories and my philosophy on the business because
(05:13):
it's it tends to be a lot different than most people's.
So so yeah, So that's how it all came together
and I started doing it and I really had fun
the very first time, and uh, for the first time.
I don't have anyone else to rely on. So it's
been a fun challenge that I've enjoyed. And and I
like telling stories. You know, there's an old saying storyteller's
(05:35):
cutting the wood. I like callous is about as much
as the next guy, So so I like telling stories. Also,
we have to back up for a second, because you
wrote for w w E. Another thing that I was
very surprised to learn about you how the heck did
that happen? You know, I'm still not sure. I know,
(05:57):
I know that I burn out pretty quick with smith
steadiness like I enjoyed when I was young. I really
enjoyed making movies because it was, you know, three months
and now, three months and now, and you make good
relationships and and and you have people that you want
to stick with forever, but there's a stop date. I
(06:18):
think it was Kathleen Turner who said a movie is
a marriage with a guaranteed divorce that everybody's in on um.
And so when I did my TV series about two
thirds through it, I was really feeling it. So I
was burning out on on Hollywood at the time. And
I went to go watch Rick Flair in his retirement
(06:40):
match against Shawn Michaels in Orlando, Florida, and I met
this really awesome lady. She worked for w W E
still does and uh now she's a vice president. And
she said, you need to you need to speak with
Stephanie McMahon because you don't just crap all over the business.
You have like a lot of ideas to fix the
things you don't like. And I was kind of done.
(07:00):
I was I had already walked away from the business.
I didn't make like a big deal out of it.
I didn't think I needed a publicity announcement. I didn't
want to do it anymore. And I love that because
you don't need one. You don't. I always felt like
a grand Jerry McGuire x when when actors did that.
I was always like, why are you telling everyone you're leaving? Like?
It was just always strange to me. So so anyway,
I was like, yeah, whatever, I'll talk to Steph. And
(07:23):
so I went to New York and I took the
train up to Stanford, Connecticut, and I saw the old
Titan Tower building where Hull Cogan used to work out
in the neon in the neon light gym right and
I met Steph and she said the same thing that
that that Proudy said, the Christian prouty, the woman I
met at WrestleMania, And she said, Oh my god, you
(07:44):
need to speak to my dad because you won't be
afraid to say no, but you'll you'll have ideas. And
I said, okay, okay, I'll talk to Vince McMahon. That's awesome. Um.
So I went into his office. We started chatting and
he offered me a job in the room and I said, yeah.
You know, I didn't have a dad grown up. So
the one cryptonite I have is when an old man
(08:05):
calls me son and uh he looked. He goes, well,
I think we could really use you here, son, And
the moment he said that, I was just like, I
haven't even spoken to my wife yet. I was like, yeah, yeah, man,
I could do this. I'll do the job. And we
shook hands right there, and I took the train home
and I called Sarah and I said, Hey, I'm gonna
I'm gonna work for w w E. I'm gonna be
(08:25):
out here in New York a while longer. And she
was there's this like two second pause, and she goes,
you're gonna wrestle in the w w E. What's the
matter with you? I was like, no, no, no, I'm
not gonna be a wrestler. I'm I'm gonna write for
for And she's like, what are you talking about? You're
gonna write and uh? And I did, what's the craziest
storyline you ever wrote? For them? They were all crazy
(08:45):
because your first idea, which is the good one, gets
rejected because they have forty people making decisions there, so
you know, the idea from its infancy is never the
child that you brought into the world, because there's so
many fingerprints on that child. Like it takes a village
to raise a kid, it just takes one writer to
(09:06):
write a scene like you don't need. And it's the
same in movies. People trash wrestling all the time, but
the moment a script gets to an actor to the
to the time it's made, it's a completely different script
half the time because the studio has its notes, and
sometimes that's good and sometimes that's really really bad. You
don't need that many people who have never physically made
(09:28):
a movie putting that much input onto it. Sometimes it works,
but more often than not you end up with some
crazy notes that a writer is struggling to to to
make work. And the same thing in the wrestling business.
We would get to a production day and I would
write what seemed like very simple, straightforward. The talent can
(09:50):
do this based on their skill level. We can get
this over and by the time it's it's showtime, you know,
suddenly they're putting the big show and it dressed up
like Santa Claus in a seat that's gimmick to bring
when he sits in it and they're not going to
tell him, and I'm like, wait, wait a minute, this
was a serious scene between two completely other people. Yeah,
but this will be great. We're going to do this,
And I was like, oh my god, all right. What
(10:11):
I really like about your show is peeling back the
curtain on how much effort and really good writing and
acting coaching goes in behind the scenes of of these shows,
which I think that's and I've I've watched some professional
wrestling my high school boyfriend. I'm a forty one year
(10:31):
old woman, so um, you know, very very familiar with
your early work, Freddie. And also my high school boyfriend
was a big like ravishing Rick Rude Yeah yeah, Recrud
fan and used to make me watch so much professional
wrestling in the basement that I took. I took someone
else to prom but I but I know, I know
(10:52):
a little bit of a language. I really liked when
you talked about how you got first got into let's
for you first got into watching wrestling, that it was
for me, it was my high school boyfriend. For you,
it was your grand Yeah, she's hard, yeah, and she
and she thought it was real. So she drives up
(11:16):
to San Juan. She had this great Cadillac right and
she gets a treatment man. And I didn't know anything
about my dad at this point, so I just thought
my grandma was like the governor of Puerto Rico or something.
So she gets to park right up front and this
guy sits outside and he says, I'll watch the car.
I didn't know that. Men, he was gonna sit there
the whole time. When we came out, he was in
the same spot. And the dude watched the car. It
(11:39):
was she had. She had cloud. So we go and
we get right up close and uh, we're there really
early too, by the way, and they're putting a cage
around the ring. And I'm, you know, eight years old,
a third grader, and I asked my grandma said, oh,
it's a steel cage match. And you didn't tell me
it's a steel cage match. She said, no, that's to
keep the wrestlers safe. I said, what do you mean
(12:00):
she goes to keep them safe from us? I said what?
And I didn't really understand until the show started and
the fans. Any food that was brought was thrown all
over these guys and all they're doing is walking to
the ring and it's not even a steel kid. They didn't,
not one wrestler used the cage as a weapon, like
there's any regular matches. But I'm watching the crowd almost
(12:26):
as much. I'm like excited just talking about this right now,
like shaking for real, like adrenaline. I'm watching the crowd
as much as I am the matches because this was
it was a little scary for me. And uh so
we go back home and we're watching wrestling, and said,
did you like it? Oh? I loved it. I loved it,
and I would wrestle with her. She was the first
person ever hit me with a with a Rick Flair
(12:47):
chop and she hit hard. She's a tough Puerto Rican girl.
She used to wrestle with us. So yeah, so she's past,
she's passed on. Now she's wrestling in having Hell or
wherever she ended up. She was hardcore man like my
mom used to send me out there, and my grandma
(13:08):
didn't like my mom, and by the time she died,
not a lot of people like my grandma. She was
a tough old woman and she loved her son. And
when she lost her son, which no parents should have
to go through it messed her up bat so she
could never speak ill of my father and she wouldn't
allow anyone to speak ill of him, even if it
was honest and truthful. Um So, wrestling was a big
(13:30):
way her and I clicked and we sat down and
we watched a match, and I had never seen a
wrestling match, and to see an adult legitimize it so
much made it even more real to me. So even
if something didn't look a real I'm like, yo, if
she's buying it, it's my job to buy it too,
because that's a grown up. What they tell you is
the truth, or so we think. And uh so, so
(13:55):
she took me to my first match. After we watched
for for a while. Um I, I started watching over
a Christmas break and then summer vacation when I went
back out there. She took me to my first match
in San Juan, which was like an hour drive from
where she lived, in a little town called And my
first taste of a live match was a match in
(14:15):
Puerto Rico, which is not the same kind of match
that I've experienced anywhere else in the world. Not that
I've seen a match in every country, but I've seen
them all over, and the Puerto Ricans were crazy. They
were throwing their their their beers on the bad guys.
They call them heels, um, we call them antagonists or baddies.
(14:35):
They were throwing their food, harder money that they spent
their harder money, food that wasn't even eaten yet. They
were throwing their food out of My Grandma said, sometimes
they throw batteries that the bad guys, that the bad
guys would win. They would try to rush the ring,
and that's why they put in the cage. I'm a kid,
I'm like, am I gonna get trampled? Like? What is
going on? It was really really intense, but it became
(14:56):
more real to me, so much so that in the
sixth grade it was this kid, Ray Garcia, and I
love Ray. That's why I'm saying his name. I'm not
trying to crap on the guy. I feel bad about this,
but he told me that wrestling was fake and that
Rick Flair wasn't wasn't a good fighter. And I didn't
(15:18):
have a dad, so all these men were like father
figures to me, right, So if you spoke ill of
Rick Flair, that was that was your ass. You know,
My godfather was Bob Wall. He didn't teach me how
to throw a football. He taught me how to whip
a quarterback's ass. Like that's the guy to train Bruce
Lee when Bruce came to America. So Ray got punched
(15:38):
in the face. He fell down, and I put him
in Rick Flair's finisher, the figure four leglock, and I
didn't know what it would do, and so when I
pushed down, it broke his ankle at the foot at
the ankle joint, and I felt his I felt a break,
and I felt his book go wobbly, and it freaked
me out and I jumped up. I was like no, like,
(16:00):
oh go, and he's crying and all these kids were like, whoa,
it's real. Oh my god, it's real, and they run
off and told on me, and I got sent home
from school and my mom was like, what did you do?
And he said I was stake and my mom literally like, well,
he knows it's not now, So again, it was legitimized
to me by an adult that it was real. And
I tell that story to let people know how how
(16:21):
prominent wrestling was in my life because I loved all
those characters so much and I only loved the bad guys.
I never liked the good guys because the good guys
played by the rules and they would lose matches because
the bad guy would you know, poke the ref and
the eye and then you know, punched the guy in
the balls and pin him on two three, And I
was like, why these guys get away with whatever they want?
(16:42):
And my mom was strict, so I didn't. So I
always collicked with the bad guys. And that's why I
kind of had the reactions I did as a little boy. Yeah,
(17:18):
you're you're a great storyteller. You made me laugh, But
it's also teaching me things about wrestling and the world
of wrestling in this whole universe that I never knew,
And I like podcasts that that that teach me stuff.
You guys also mentioned on the Macaulay Culkin podcast, like
you know, what was your what was your gateway wrestler,
(17:39):
your gateway storyline, how you first got into wrestling. So
much as you guys discussed your your gateway wrestlers on
this podcast, we like to talk about your gateway podcast,
the podcast that got you listening to podcasts, What podcasts
like really got you to like this medium? Well, it
was really just one and it was a true crime
(18:02):
podcast and it was I don't remember the name of
the of the guy because it wasn't a regular podcast.
It was just a journalist who told a story over
six episodes, and it was about the uh, the senator
in Alaska who's playing vanished and they thought that it
could have been based on some of the decisions he
was going to make in the ways he was going
(18:23):
to vote, that it could have been a hit job.
And so I started listening to that. And I had
always been into like those sexy kind of documentaries, like
the Billy Corbyn type document Cocaine Cowboys and that kind
of stuff, So I didn't even know there were podcasts
in that space. I was literally listened I think too.
(18:43):
I was listening to like Colin Cowherd on I Heart Radio,
I think, is what it was. And there I heard
a commercial for that and I was like, oh, let me,
let me check this out. And I didn't even go
back to Colin Coward. I just binged all six episodes
of this story about this Alaska senator who was lost
in you know, over a strange mountain range in like
(19:05):
western Alaska, and uh, That's kind of what got me in.
And then from there, a lot of stand up comics
had me doing their podcast and I hated listening to
anything I do same way. I don't want to watch
anything I've been in so so, so once I started
doing podcasts with with those guys and girls and and
(19:26):
having fun, I would only do podcasts with comics because
they would just crack me up and it's always a
cool way to reconnect with my father's life and and
that kind of thing. And then I just kind of
got the bug for it after that and seeing how
much fun they have, and so I'm like, man, I'm
gonna do that too. So that's that's all I came from.
I have never heard of this uh pod, this true
(19:47):
crime podcast. I just looked it up. It's missing and
a lot that was the name of it. Close your
eyes picture Alaska. What do you see? Mountains, snow waves,
do you feel cold? Alone? Somewhere in that expanse lies
(20:12):
the wreckage of a missing cessna and the bodies of
four men, including two US Congressmen. Their disappearance on October six,
nine two prompted the largest search in American history, a
search that spanned thirty nine days and covered three and
twenty five thousand square miles. Yet no sign of the
(20:32):
men or they're plane ever surfaced, no oil slick, no wreckage,
nothing ever. This story is one of the great mysteries
of American history, but you've probably never heard of it,
and that's okay. Even in nineteen seventy two, it vanished
(20:53):
from the headlines within weeks. A nation consumed with Watergate
and Vietnam quickly moved on are the families of the
men of Congressman Hail Boggs and Nick Beggett, pilot Don
John's and political aid Russ Brown. It was a slower
process without a wreck There were no definitive answers, no closure.
(21:14):
Eleven children, including the journalist Coke Roberts and future U. S.
Senator Mark Begets, lost their fathers. The description is like
a like a like an eighties graphic novel descript describer,
and it makes me feel like I'm going to read
a comic book instead of listening to a podcast. Also
like it's like Hail Boggs is clear, or that Bruce
(21:39):
will right. It's like it's like Jack mccli needs the
syllable though you're so right, You're so right. So, but
I like that you started doing this comedy podcast because
your dad was a commune. Yeah. Yeah, and that's where
the junior comes. He was also named Freddie, and he
was a big time coming. He had the number one
(22:01):
show in the country in nineteen seventy five. He had
just stolen the Caesar's Palace gig from Bill Cosby. Screw
Bill Cosby. Glad my half probably knew what a piece
of crap he was, and that's why he undercut him
and got the gig. Um. But yeah, so it was
always a way. I mean, I grew up in I
was twelve years old. I was going to comedy clubs.
(22:21):
I wasn't legally allowed to, but all the owners love
my daddy, so they so they would let me in
and I would I would sit in the back. I
would bring spiral notebooks that were meant to be my homework,
and I would write down the comedians jokes as fast
as I could. People like like everybody from Paul Mooney,
Richard Richard Pryor who discovered my dad, so he was
(22:44):
always really good to me. Uh, Elaine Bluesler, Chris Titus,
all these like legends, right and I would write their
jokes down and I would put stars next to the
jokes depending on how loud the audience laughed, like the
thirteen year Judging jokes basically, And years later, in my forties,
(23:05):
I still have all those journals, and I gave one
of them to Chris Titus. I was like, yo, man,
these are jokes you told in and these are how
the audience reacted to it. And he was like, are
you kidding me this? We put this joke on my show,
Titus on Fox Back, and whenever I was like, yeah,
I remember it, So it's It was always a cool
(23:25):
way for me to kind of connect to my pops.
And I've always had a soft spot for for comics
and wrestlers because I feel that's the hardest form of
show business. You know, there's such an instant raw reaction.
If I make a movie, I got nine months to
decide how I feel before you ever tell me whether
you liked it or didn't. And if I'm not pleased
(23:47):
with something, no matter how happy you are, it's not
gonna make me feel any better. And if I'm pleased
with something, no matter how much trash you talk, it
won't make me feel any worse. But with wrestling in comedy,
if they're not laughing, they're not laughing at you and
you and it's instant, and that joke died your match.
(24:07):
If they're not into it, it's it's because of you,
and it's it's instant. Like musicians can't even make this
claim because they know the song. They're not freestyle and
a song up there. So wrestlers in comics freestyle all
the time. And to me, wrestling was always the literal
translation of blood, sweat, and tears on a literal canvas,
(24:30):
and that, to me is the best example of art
and an artist in show business. I don't listen personally
to a ton of comedy podcasts. Can you recommend a
couple that you love that I should be listening to? Yeah,
you should listen to Adam Ray's UM. I think it's
a l n about Last Night. He always has great
(24:50):
guests on there. He just had Sandra Bullock on and
UH and she doesn't do a lot of podcasts and
she killed But that would be the first one that
I wrote you. Sunday Papers is a great one. That's
Brian Fitzpatrick's What Else, Mark Norman and UH and Joe
list have one called to Tuesday Mornings, I think is
(25:13):
what it's called. And then uh, Christa Stefano and sal
Volcano have a one called hey Babe, which is the
stupidest of all of them. And if you're just wanting
to listen to two assholes that are way dumber than
you but will make you laugh, you should listen to that.
It's very funny. A quick refresh. Why do you have
(25:35):
it in a tubbleware? Nobody? It's in just tinfoil, but
I was afraid it was gonna matter. Is legit the
same tubble where I give my five year old daughter
for school every day? What are you saying? Say it again, tubbleware?
Say it again? Slow? Tubbleware, slow, very slow. First say
the first syllable tub wrong. What do you mean? I
thought I caught that you throw? You're throwing bees at me?
(25:59):
What about about Tupperware? Tupper It's chopper. It's tupper, babe,
It always has been, always will be. Yeah, did you
know that pimp? And it was tupper I thought it
was tumberware because it kind of looks like a tub.
You know, that makes total sense. So you're saying, my
whole life, I have a clinical doctor degree in physical therapy.
I've been walking up to people and saying, do you
(26:20):
have tubber? What can I take that home? At some
tubberware tube like flubber, It's tougher. This was awesome. This
was so much fun. Go listen to Wrestling with Freddie.
I am partial to the mccull culkin episode, but there's
plenty of other options out there for you. As a reminder,
(26:44):
the other shows we suggested today are Missing in Alaska
and Hey Babe with Kristy Stephano and sal Vocano. You've
got your wrestling, You've got your crime show, You've got
your comedy. What more do you need? Well, once you
finish those, you're going to need more pod casts. So
I'll see you next week with even more recommendations. Happy listening.
(27:07):
The pod club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our
executive producers are Me Again and Emily Maronoff. Our producers
are Mary Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is
Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional music was composed by
Aaron Kaufman. Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and
(27:28):
special thanks to Nikki Tore. It was just a wonderful
human being who I like to think at the end
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