The New Day — Big E., Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods — recently appeared together as guests on Chris Jericho’s “Talk Is Jericho” podcast. During their appearance on the show, a lot of behind-the-scenes information about Vince McMahon’s plans for the group and his reaction when those plans didn’t go as he expected them to are covered.
The following are some highlights and notes from their appearance on the show.
On how the idea for The New Day began: “So I’m working on that character, trying to get something going and then I’m kind of realizing that, ‘oh, [Big] E’s not doing anything, he’s kind of coming off his I.C. title run and starting to float, so, you know what? I like E, he’s one of my good friends, lets see if we can merge him into this,’ said Xavier Woods. “So we kind of start working on something, literally weeks at a time, and we’re going into pre-tapes, filming things, pitching ideas and then we’re thinking, ‘something is missing from this, like, we need one more thing.’
“That’s when we kind of thought, ‘maybe Kofi’, but it was kind of a heel thing. We’re thinking, ‘Kofi has never been a heel – I don’t know if [WWE] would let him turn heel’. After talking about it for a while, we kind of approached them with what we wanted to do and rather than being this group that everyone thought it was going to be, like three angry black guys, it’s like, ‘no, it’s three guys who come up from kind of the same background, that just want more from life, more from their jobs, more from their friends, more from everything around them’. So we tried to take that mentality and get it across TV as best we could and we did.”
On WWE taking The New Day off of TV immediately after forming the group: “We got taken off [TV] and then we basically had to reevaluate and come up with something different,” Kofi Kingston said. “We were told we needed to go in a kind of positive, uplifting type of direction and we would be going into Vince [McMahon’s] office, pretty much every week for probably months.”
On Vince McMahon changing the idea to a preacher gimmick, and their reaction: “We kind of got frustrated too and then we didn’t go back to his office for a little while and then he called us back in, like, a few weeks later, and he’s like, ‘you know, guys, it [has] taken me a long time to come up with this, but I think I got it: I want you guys to be preachers’ and all three of us are like, ‘oh my god,'” said Kingston.
Kofi would go on to explain that the preacher gimmick was the exact opposite of what they wanted to do, however Big E. saw it as an opportunity. The trio then decided collectively that if they were super over-the-top with the gimmick, it would become a heel stable, which is basically what happened.
From there, Kingston claimed McMahon told him he felt The New Day preacher characters would be “the greatest babyface thing ever.” Woods noted that McMahon looked visibly emotional when talking about the group failing to get over as a babyface faction.
You can listen to the complete interview at PodcastOne.com.
