Cody Rhodes Interview w/ ChicagoNow.com

Cody Rhodes recently did an interview with ChicagoNow.com discussing a variety of topics from “Warehouse 13″ to wrestling and his family. Read the full interview below:

Dashing Cody Rhodes doesn’t get asked to kiss during World Wrestling Entertainment broadcasts, so he didn’t know what to expect on “Warehouse 13.”

But his first on-camera kiss–with series star Joanne Kelly–definitely wasn’t sexy.

“It wasn’t the emotional, loving, two-souls-connecting type kiss,” Rhodes told me during a phone chat last week from Marietta, Ga. “It was her with buffalo sauce all over her face and a half a cold buffalo wing in her mouth and us kind of a slobbering on one another.”

The WWE superstar explores his softer side in the “WH13″ episode “Merge with Caution,” which airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday on Syfy. Rhodes guest stars as Kurt Smoller, the former star quarterback of the football team at Myka Bering’s high school. Myka (Kelly) used to tutor Kurt and during their 10-year reunion, sparks fly when they meet again.

The only problem is–and some might consider this a spoiler but it is being shown in the trailer for the episode–Myka and Pete (Eddie McClintock) exchange bodies at some point in the episode thanks to an artifact.

Rhodes wouldn’t say whom Kurt ends up kissing. “It may not be what it seems for Kurt when he speaks to Myka,” he said. “He might actually be speaking to Pete.”

If the first kiss involved buffalo sauce, maybe it is goofy Pete in Myka’s body. Still, it was Rhodes and Kelly locking lips. Rhodes said the biggest shock for him on set was that he and Kelly never talked about the kissing scene beforehand. He had an acting coach helping him with his scenes, and they discussed it. He and director Anton Cooper chatted about it. The actors rehearsed briefly, but without kissing. Then it came time to film the real thing.
“It was like riding a motorcycle blind, man,” Rhodes said, adding that despite the pressure, “it went smoothly, sans the buffalo sauce.”

“The truth is, Joanne Kelly is such a beautiful woman that it’s one of those moments that anyone, anyone doing it would really at least have to chuckle on the inside from the fact that, ‘Gosh this is what I’m doing and I’m getting paid to do it,’” he said. “That’s pretty great.”

Despite the good time he had on set, and the fact that he’d be happy to reprise the Kurt Smoller role, Rhodes has no aspirations to get into acting like former WWE superstars The Rock, John Cena and Steve Austin, among others.

“I love what I do at the WWE and I’m just now starting to really get into my own stride,” he said. “I’m only 25 and I’m going to be working for a pretty long time.”

He’ll get to do it on Syfy beginning Oct. 1, when WWE Friday Night SmackDown moves to the network with a two-hour block of wrestling. Rhodes said the move is a good one for all involved, and that fans can expect a new, youthful, character-driven Smackdown with such superstars as McIntyre, Dolph Ziggler, Alberto Del Rio, CM Punk–”a really tremendous, tremendous list.”

Don’t expect any kissing, however. Even though a gentleman never kisses and tells, I had to ask Rhodes how, after that initial messy kiss between Kurt and Myka, the romantic kiss went.

“Oh, I’m no gentleman. I don’t know if you’ve seen my work with the WWE, I’m no gentleman,” he said. “Honest to God, it was one of the best kisses I can remember. It truly was.”

Go Joanne Kelly.

Rhodes told me about his wrestling heritage–his dad is the legendary Dusty Rhodes and his brother is Goldust; that he would like to play Superman one day, and that he hopes he’s still dashing when he wins the World Heavyweight Championship.

Tell me about Kurt.
Oh, Kurt Smoller role was a very fun role, he being Myka’s high school love interest. What I like about Kurt is a little different than standard television and film jocks. In high school he was the cool captain of the football team, the quarterback. Ten years down the road when it comes to the reunion it wasn’t like all had fallen out for him; he was still pretty cool. So it wasn’t the standard sort of a guy who couldn’t hang on. Kurt had moved on and Kurt, according to Myka and you know, even Kurt’s girlfriend from high school, Kurt still looked
just as good.

Otherwise you wouldn’t be playing him, right?
Well, I mean, I’d still be excited about anything over the ropes in television, but yeah, I would be a little less excited if I was playing some washed up guy, that’s for sure.

He’s also unlike some high school jocks on TV because he seems to be a nice guy too.
Yeah, yeah. And that I think he learned perhaps from his mistakes in his teenage days. That’s actually where the episode kind of picks up with him, I guess you’d call it, making a pass at Myka Bering who he vaguely remembers as the girl used to tutor him in school. She apparently has grown into quite the woman.

So she wasn’t as striking in high school as she is now?
I don’t know that she wasn’t striking. Let’s say that she might have just been a hair tie and taken her glasses away from being striking. She didn’t really know yet how to exude herself.

Is there anything about the role that sort of reminds you of your own high school experiences?
Yeah, it certainly does. I was playing a little bit older; my 10-year anniversary will be in 2014. There was a girl that sat next to me in creative writing class who was my favorite part of the day, getting to talk to her. She was what I tried to use as inspiration for the relationship that existed between Myka and Kurt Smoller. So that was very simple. You know there’s one that, you wouldn’t call them “ones that got away,” but you like call them ones that you never went to bat for.

You kind of wonder, “What if?”
Yeah exactly. Exactly that. You wonder about them.

So is this something you want to start doing more of, doing the acting things?
You know, we have a lot of guys who have bridged over from sports entertainment to the silver screen, the little screen and for me, I had fun. I really did. And I would certainly come back. I think Kurt Smoller needs even more to get involved with an artifact somewhere on “”Warehouse 13.” But I love what I do at the WWE and I’m just now starting to really get into my own stride. I’m only 25 and I’m going to be working for a pretty long time. I love it too much.

I was doing a little research and I watched some video interview you did where the person interviewing you kept asking you if what the WWE do is real or is it fake? You just said, “We entertain. It’s entertainment.” Do you feel that the acting is just another step beyond what you already do?
It’s funny because like, if you went up to Christian Bale in an airport, or if you saw Christian Bale … and you went up to him and you said, “Oh my gosh, Batman. You’re Batman, so it’s a pleasure to meet you Bruce Wayne.” What we do is no different. We just happen to use our real names a lot of time on TV.

So it’s so funny that some of the most educated people still like to do the witch hunt and ask the “Is wrestling real” question. Of course wrestling is not real. I always like to say, “It’s fixed, it’s not fake,” because we put ourselves through a tremendous amount of physicality and it’s a dance man! And the WWE universe and the people watching–they’re all part of it. They’re all playing an instrument. It’s so much fun and it’s so past the day of the ’80′s “wrassling.”

All right, but you guys are definitely doing all that physical stuff; you have to train and stay fit.
You got to be training. We tell kids all the time, you can’t watch one of our DVDs without sitting through the “Don’t Try This at Home” message. I got a bursa sac on my left elbow right now, my knees are a little roughed up, I got a minor tear in my right bicep and that’s a good day.

It’s funny, when I started my two days of shooting the “Warehouse” episode, I had gotten punched square in the eye a few days before, and my eye was starting to get infected. It was not conjunctivitis, but another sort of infection, like inflammation in my eye and it looked like it was going to be like nasty pink eye. I was so scared that like by the second day of the shoot it would be inflamed and big, so I was pumping that thing full of eye drops the whole time I was there. And when I finally got a chance to look at the footage, I thought, “Thank God you really can’t tell.” Because the day after it was as big and red and puffy as it could be.

Good thing you kept it at bay. I hear you’re a super hero and comic book fan. Would you ever do a super hero movie?
Actually, oh my gosh, that’s something I would-I know this sounds like, you know, how many people say this very same thing? But man I love super heroes. I love comics, but specifically I love superhero comics. I’m not really a fan of the mature, grittier comics, zombie comics. They’re cool and stuff, but I like men in tights, women in tights, putting their boots on like I do out there. Heroes with powers, mutant powers or whatever. I like that stuff. I don’t know why they didn’t like Brandon Routh, but the world needs another Superman, man.

Is that who you’d want to do?
Oh, I mean I have the credentials in terms of hair color and size and my eyes and stuff like that if you’re going straight from the DC database. But I’d do anything, man. I’d do anything from the obscure like Black Bolt to the high profile like a Superman. I love comics.

That’s cool. So WWE Friday Night SmackDown moves to SyFy this fall? Are you excited about that? Is that a good thing?
Yeah. What a tremendous move, I really think, for both parties. And right now it’s so cool to be a part of SmackDown. I said this the other day; I don’t want to go back to RAW. I’ve been on RAW, that being the Monday night show, a show that’s been around a little longer.

To me, SmackDown is the better show. And it doesn’t always get credit. What we’re bringing to SyFy is just a tremendous line of long-lasting characters. There’s been a huge movement in the WWE and you have almost all those guys that everyone is waiting to reach the ceiling. You have almost all those guys on SmackDown–McIntyre, myself, Dolph Ziggler, Alberto Del Rio, CM Punk. It’s a really tremendous, tremendous list.

With your dad, Dusty Rhodes, and brother Dustin, or Goldust, and a lot of your extended family were or are in the wrestling business. What’s you favorite memory of your dad’s career?
Any chance I could get when they were in the south near here [Marietta, Ga.] Any chance I could get [to see a] WCW Live Event I would get out there and I loved the shows. I didn’t really like back stage, I didn’t really like to lift the veil. I liked to be out in the crowd and I was a fan. And my dad, I guess the best way to put it is he didn’t smarten me up. He let it be magical for me for a very long time. And I can remember too, he didn’t work in the WWE, which at the time was the WWF, he didn’t work there for too, too long, but I remember specifically the first time I ever got in a ring, a WWE ring was, gosh I was maybe only four-years-old, he was on “Wrestle Mania” it was in Toronto, Canada, and he picked me up and carried me in the ring with his hands under my arms and put me over the top rail and let my feet touch the ground. I think I walked around for maybe only a few seconds before he got in the ring himself, picked me back up and put me outside the ring. I don’t know what his intentions were, or if he didn’t want me to get too hooked or what. That’s one of things, I’m not even sure if it was real, but I know it was. I know it did really happen and it’s one of my favorite memories.

Did you always want to wrestle, to follow into his footsteps?
I didn’t think I was ever going to do anything else. When I was about 19, I had a streak of rebellion in me and at the moment I wasn’t confident I could compete in pro wrestling and sports entertainment. I went to L.A. and got into an acting school out there and I tried that side of entertainment. I was out there thinking, I knew this was a bad thought process, I was out there thinking that when this was over, when you’ve succeeded here, you can get into wrestling. That’s no way at 19 to go about it, so I went back to my first love and moved to Louisville, Ken., where I began to train at Ohio Valley Wrestling to be a WWE Superstar.

Is there anything special that you guys are going to do this fall on SyFy? Anything new that you can talk about that will be in the shows and everything?
The show very much sells itself and has a tremendous track record with it’s past networks and it’s always such a huge hit. But I can say, I think you’ll see a new face to SmackDown and I think when you have such youth and talent like we do, and I include myself in that group, it is going to be a different SmackDown. For so long it had been “The Rock’s SmackDown” and then it was the “Undertaker’s SmackDown.” Right now it’s somebody else’s SmackDown and you’re really just waiting to see really who gets put in that position. Certainly that doesn’t mean we won’t be seeing the Undertaker, but it’s really I can honestly say from the bottom of my heart, SmackDown is the best show WWE offers and it’s going to be very much just that on SyFy.

I have a few questions from Twitter. @WWEdivasource wants to know which diva would you like to work with the most?
Layla. You know, she has a nice butt and an English accent and I really like English accents.

And nice butts?
I’ve worked with her briefly and just hearing that accent is killer.

@GeekToMe asks: Has the WWE felt any pressure to tone down the violence because of Linda McMahon’s political aspirations?
It’s a great question, but it’s funny because the WWE went TV-PG … before Linda McMahon began her run for Senate and the two don’t go hand-in-hand. Theey’re certainly both great moves. She will be a great senator and WWE, it was the best move to go TV-PG. That style before was “wrassling,” is the best way to describe it. When people say, “That’s wrassling,” it’s blood and things and it’s not so much family entertainment.

Trust me, I grew up on wrassling. But I’m hoping this new generation grows up on sports entertainment because there are still heavy collisions and unbelievable physicality. There are some really amazing things the guys can do, but we want our audience to be young boys and girls and we want them to grow up with us. We’re not out to please a small sect of gays in their late 20′s who want to see all the stuff they saw in the late 90′s. The chance of that happening is zero.

Who would you like to work a match with if you could with anyone in history, who would it be and what kind of match would it be?
Well, my favorite professional wrestlers was WWE Superstar was Shawn Michaels and I got the opportunity to work with him. I have now another opportunity, but it’s just got to present itself in a way that’s entertaining for the fans. I’d love to work with my brother, Goldust. I think that if he was to have a last match, I’d sure want it to be [with] me. He’s on the backside of his career and he can still go like somebody on the front side of their career, right in their prime, but he’d expressed to me that he’d like to get in there with me and I would love to get in there with him.

So any family rifts have been repaired? I’d read your dad and he had a falling out.
Yeah, in the wrestling game, it was a very public falling out the two of them had and he kind of left me by the wayside. I wasn’t able to be there when he initially debuted the character Goldust, which was, at the time, envelop-pushing, ahead of its time. It’s been quite some time now since he came back into our family, but I never would have imagined that we would be working in the WWE together. I always thought I would be up here by myself just with the name, but it’s Goldust on Monday Night RAW, and it’s Dusty Rhodes, our old man, down at the WWE’s developmental territory training future super stars. So it’s the family business.

That’s great. So the last question, are you going to become the first dashing world heavyweight champion?
You know? I certainly hope. I think it’s only a matter of time, but I hope to say that when I do win the World Heavyweight championship I’ll still be the Dashing Cody Rhodes. But that seem like a name that may not roll off the tongue, but it’s a name that sticks. So, I’d say yes.

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