Former WWE Diva Terri Runnels recently appeared as a guest on WWE Hall Of Famer Jim Ross’ weekly “Ross Report” podcast at PodcastOne.com and spoke about her past relationship with Dustin “Goldust” Runnels, her time in WWE and more. Below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On walking out on Dustin Runnels and him being easily influenced by his father and other wrestling legends:
“I walked out on Dustin one night. Yes, I literally walked out. Yes, I walked out. Whatever his mistaken thoughts were, I guess he thought I was a gold digger, which, interestingly enough, Dustin, God bless his soul, didn’t have a pot to piss in when we first started dating. I owned a property in downtown Atlanta [Georgia], had a nice savings. I was doing very well for myself. I didn’t need anybody, so I found that very interesting that that was one of the concerns. But yeah, in the beginning, I knew who I was. I knew that I loved and cared for Dustin and I was very protective of him in the sense that sometimes Dustin needs that. And [Ross] knows exactly what I’m talking about, but I just, one night, decided ‘I’m not doing this’ and I just said, ‘I’m out of here’ and just left. It was at Center Stage and I just walked out.” Terri continued, “Dustin is a grown man now, but at the time, he was very, very swayed, heavily, by anything his father said, Barry Windham said. Some of the older guys could push Dustin’s buttons and it was sad to me because they sat back and laughed at Dustin once they would push the buttons and then, of course, I’m seeing the broken soul at home and that wasn’t fair. That wasn’t right to do to Dustin. So I just think I had enough of the games and the bulls–t.”
On coming up with the idea of her Marlena character while laying in a tanning bed:
“When I came up with the character of Marlena, I was laying in the tanning bed in our home in Stockbridge, Georgia. Dustin’s on the road. I’m there with [their daughter] Dakota and absolutely loving being a mommy. It’s not like I was saying, ‘God, I’ve got to get out of this house – I can’t do this’. I was happier than a pig in poop. But also, I’m a very creative person and I think it’s very easy for me to stand back and look at something with an overall view and say ‘there’s a deficit there, that needs that, okay, this needs the addition of this component or that’ and I was doing the same things.” Terri added, “Marlena was born in that one tanning bed session in my house and the weekend before that, I had been to my sister’s. And she collected these high end Barbie dolls and Bob Mackie, who used to design all of Cher’s dresses and Carol Burnett’s, he designed this Barbie doll, a limited edition, and the Barbie doll’s name was Sun Goddess. And that image, that visual, was what I saw for Marlena. And then, of course, I told Vince that I wanted either a glass of wine or a cigar that I enjoyed smoking to be a part of the character and we decided that the cigar would make more sense. And so it all just came to be.”
On getting the call to come to WWE after initially being told by Pat Patterson that the company wasn’t interested:
“A month later, Dustin called me and said, ‘where are you? Pack your bags. They want to do your idea, so that’s how that came to be.” Terri professed, “here’s the lovely thing about that character: there was not one thing about that character anybody created other than me. Not one thing about that character. Now, storyline-wise, there were plenty of storylines that were created for that character, but everything about that character, not one of you guys created and I love knowing that the inception and the continuation of that character was everything that I conceived of in that tanning bed.”
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