AEW manager and producer Arn Anderson was the latest guest on Talk Is Jericho to discuss the life of Brodie Lee, who the Enforcer previously worked with in WWE when he wrestled as Luke Harper. Anderson reveals an interesting character idea he had for Lee, and how WWE was quick to shoot it down. Highlights are below.
How Lee was criticized at times in WWE for not leaning into the hillbilly part of his Luke Harper persona:
I heard one time he was told that he doesn’t sound like a hillbilly, and that’s what’s holding him back. ‘He’s too intelligent when he speaks.’ I had a character for him that would have been awesome, as frightening as anybody has been. What about the guy that looks like that, especially when he wore the dirty, dingy white ‘wife-beater’, and it was even a little muddy even on some nights.
An idea he had for Lee’s character in WWE:
What if you got a shot from somebody in a tree or something, and you’re shooting into a window and you got a single light bulb and it really looks like a primitive, almost I’m expecting the camera to pan down like you got some guy tied up and you’re torturing them or something. What if that guy is sitting with a computer, and he’s rattling away. And you made that guy The Unabomber. He’s brilliant. He’s making stuff. He’s going over the injuries. He somehow got ahold of all the records of all the crew with their injuries. What is he going to attack next, kind of game planning. His voice is eloquent. You make him a genius. How scary would that guy have been? Well, when I tried to lay that out to creative, they looked at me like I got six heads as you can imagine.
(H/T Wrestling Inc.)
