Former WWE star Dexter Lumis appeared on “Insight With Chris Van Vliet,” where he discussed various topics, including his WWE character’s minimal dialogue.
Lumis said, “I sure didn’t. It’s funny because fans come to me, like last weekend at WrestleCon, or this appearance I did in Phoenix. Randoms will come up to me and be like, ‘I loved you on Tacoma FD.’ I’m like, ‘You watched that, so you heard me speak.’ People are blown away by that. I do actually speak, I was playing a character.”
On why his character didn’t speak:
“I don’t really know why they decided, hey, this is great if he just doesn’t speak. But I had my mentality on it, and I think what I was looking at is everybody talks, almost, in my opinion, too much. So how can I be different? I’m always thinking about that. How can I present myself on TV differently than everybody else to catch the attention of the fans in a different way? So I think it was striking in a way: this guy, he’s just got a cold stare, and he doesn’t speak. Then it became a challenge. Can I elicit emotion from the fans without saying a word? Can I make them feel a certain way? Can I get my emotion that I’m trying to get across to these fans without saying anything? That became kind of the goal, the mission.”
On the film inspiration of his character:
“Initially, it was American Psycho, and at the time it was when the character idea was presented to me. I’d say it’s late 2013. I went to Oklahoma. I had a dark match with Kazarian in TNA, and before that match, I get pulled into an office by John Gaburick, and he says, ‘I had this idea, but what do you want to do?’ I just started telling him what I wanted to do, and then he just said, ‘Well, we already have that. Can you do this?’ He said, ‘Have you seen American Psycho?’ My eyes just lit up. I get chills thinking about it now because I’m like,’ It’s one of my favorite movies. Whatever you need, I got it.’ He’s like, ‘You think you can do that?’ I was like, I’ll be doing my research. I don’t think I need to do too much because I know so much about the movie already. Then I started playing around with it, like Dexter, the TV show that was very popular at the time. Again, how can I be different? Everybody wrestles in wrestling gear. I wanted to be a heel. I wanted people to just be like, he has puke green pants on. He’s wearing a shirt while he wrestles. He’s wearing gloves. What’s wrong with this guy? Just those little things, and it got a lot of buzz. Twitter at the time was very like, this guy doesn’t wrestle in wrestling gear, is this or that, and I loved it. Anything that just made them hate me more, and the subtleness of the music, and it wasn’t anything loud or crazy, here comes this good-looking kid who’s got a good physique, but wait, he’s covering it up. Just different.”
On where he got the name Dexter Lumis:
“So it was like five names and different combinations, and they sort of pick what they like out of the lot. I had Dexter on there, and I had Loomis on there, but I had it L O O M I S, like the doctor from Halloween. Then in Scream, there was the Loomis character as well, Billy Loomis. So it was kind of like if I could get away with some sort of spelling in that framework. I’d be really, really happy about that, and it was kind of my ode to the genre and the horror influence. So they really liked Dexter Loomis, and I was blown away. I was like, can they get that? Then they changed the spelling to L U M I S. But I was happy. It was great.”
On shedding his old WWE character and changing up his look:
“I think that was important to shed that character and do it right. There was a story there. I wanted to do it day one as soon as I got that call, because I was all game for this character initially and saw it through to the end. I was committed. I take a lot of pride in how I carry myself and get into a role, almost like a method actor in a way. I hear this a lot. I take acting lessons and from acting coaches who warn me of the dangers of method acting. I’ve always been intrigued by that, the actors that just get into it, like Heath Ledger. I’m not fond of the way that ended for him, but I was very intrigued by it. He had very detailed journals on everything that sort of reminded him of how to get this character across. He had, like, pictures of hyenas in his journal. I guess it’s the laugh.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
