The following are highlights of a new U.K. Mirror interview with WWE Diva and Total Divas star Natalya:
Total Divas season three kicks off on January 4. There’s some marital issues this season…
I never really thought I had marriage problems, I thought I had a perfect relationship with TJ, then I started doing Total Divas and I realised, wait a minute, my relationship’s not perfect at all. I watched the show back and it’s been very therapeutic for me. My mum watched it, and TJ’s mum watched it and she was like, ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like the D-word.’ Nobody, including us, knew how bad our relationship was until we did the show, filmed it and watched it back. It’s been very therapeutic for me to do it and address it.
How real is this, though? Is it just scripted?
I’m glad you asked that question. There was some speculation from people, and I took it as a compliment because people didn’t really want to think TJ and I had problems because they liked us as a couple. Some people were saying, ‘Oh, it’s all fake, Nattie and TJ aren’t fighting.’ I thought it was touching. I wish that was the case, you don’t realise how real things are until you go through it.
I realised doing the show we’re really disconnected. I’ve known him for 17 years. Our relationship started going up in flames and it was hard to watch it and experience it in front of the entire world, and have people go, ‘Oh, it’s not real’ and have my mum say, ‘I know you’re crying over something, those are tears are real, I know my daughter.’ I’m still working through it with TJ.
Some fans were critical of Charlotte losing to you in such a short amount of time on Raw recently…
We don’t control a lot of things in WWE, it’s live TV, you can’t control how long you’re going to get. Sometimes you’re going to get 20 minutes and sometimes you’re going to get 20 seconds, you just have to maximise those minutes and do the best you can.
I’m happy we got a couple of minutes to showcase something – it’s better than nothing. Would I loved to have had the same kind of match we had at Takeover on Raw? Yes. But I don’t control that. It was a way for Takeover to be promoted a little bit. They’d done that with the pay per view prior to this.
In a perfect world, I’d take 25 minutes with Charlotte, but it turned out to be two and guess what? Because I beat Charlotte in two minutes, it’s only meaningful we’d have a rematch – and we better have a rematch because I plan on evening out the odds and beating her and taking her championship from her!
Hit up Page 2 for Naty’s reaction to Vince McMahon’s “Brass Ring” comments and her thoughts on NXT Divas getting more ring time than the women on the main roster.
