Former WWE creative writer Andrea Listenberger appeared on the Ring The Belle podcast and here are the highlights…
What it was like to deal with WWE changing creative plans at the last minute: “For me personally, it wasn’t that huge of an adjustment. In addition to being a comedy writer, before coming in to WWE, I also worked a lot in reality television, I still do work in reality television, and that’s a whole other different podcast, but put it simply, in reality we often joke about network notes where one day they’re out there asking you to shoot something to say one thing, and then you get the footage back, and then you not only have to change it to say something entirely different, but re-work what you’ve shot to go against its purpose. So honestly, after going through a network notes process like that, it’s kind of par for the course, to take the baby, throw it out with the bathwater, start fresh or re-pivot and re-focus.”
Getting the call from WWE that she was being released: “I was hanging out in my Stamford corporate housing, we had just sent something in for some episodes, talking to some people, and yeah, I honestly wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t surprised to be perfectly honest, given the situation of everything that’s going on, but it was a little surprising. At the end of the day, I had a very positive experience writing for the team. It was an experience that I wouldn’t change or give up. If that call had come before WrestleMania, I would have felt probably gutted about it because I had so little skin in the game. I feel like I showed that I can do one thing pretty well within WWE, and I know what I contributed and I know what I brought to the team, and I feel very strong, very confident about that. I’m a little bummed on a personal level that I can’t show some other stuff that I have up my sleeve but that’s show business, baby.”
