WWE star Aleister Black spoke with The Stunner about various topics, including where he finds inspiration these days for his current on-screen character.
Black said, “Still music, videos, interviews, backgrounds in bands, books, artwork. There are paintings that I have that give me ideas, even more Renaissance style paintings because a lot of them can be very grim and dark. I own a couple and sometimes I just sit and look at them and I find little things, colors, or details that make their way into my gear or give me an idea for things to say. This run, I really made it a point that I want this character to be more humanized, but still have a way of speaking that is perceived as social commentary. The flip side now, the way I perceive the world in its darkest ways for the last 10 years, is that everybody is hyper-critical of themselves and presents one thing but is the other. That became a big part of what I wanted to translate. You go to social media, you cannot open a topic without people jumping down each other’s throats. They just keep faking the funk, doubling down, tripling down, even when they are proven completely wrong. People are not as good as they think they are.”
On the concept behind his character:
“In the concept of the character, it is a lot more like I am not necessarily corrupting you; I am just making you what you were always supposed to be. You are fighting your own nature. Everybody is corrupted to the core. Instead of constantly trying to pretend that we are not because we have moral high grounds, indulge into it. That is who you are. Stop fighting it. You are this negative person. I see it every day. That became my social commentary. It manifested with the Dark Father and found its rooting. If you look back at the thing between me and Cody, that played into the idea of this All-American, blue-eyed, blond-haired good guy, and no one likes that anymore. It is the same with Randy Orton. For the character, it is like, you put on the coats of being the father and the husband, but those are facades. The real you is in there. I am trying to save you. Evil people do not think they are inherently evil. There is not a person who walks out of bed going, ‘What chaos can I obtain today?’ No, you come out with convictions. That is what makes a villain great; he is convinced of his cause and does not act maliciously for the sake of it. In WWE, I have to throw in a layer that is a little bit more on the nose or else it would not translate. It still has to be a little campy and obvious because that is how things translate. But there are people who go, ‘Boy, is he evil? Because he is kind of right.’ Does that make him evil, or ahead of his time, or misunderstood? Characters are interesting when there are multiple directions.”
