AEW star Julia Hart spoke with The Takedown on a number of topics, including how far she has come in the last four years.
Hart said, “I think it’s just crazy how much I’ve been through in four years of being just in wrestling. Having a cheerleader character, switching and doing a whole 180, building my way up to become the TBS Champion, and then going through an injury all in a span of just four years. I feel like I’ve been through so much and I still have so much more to go through. Everything comes with a lesson and just figuring out how to navigate where you’re going and how to do it and just to do it with grace. So, I think that I looked at the injury as more of a lesson and more of just like a ‘calm down Julia, like breathe, and take in everything that just happened, because great things just happened.”
On learning to wrestle:
“I learned how to wrestle on TV. I think Ruby Soho told me once that it took her, I don’t something like eight years before she was on TV. She had eight years of learning before she then got on TV. And, like, my 10th match was on TV against Britt Baker, so I didn’t know what I was doing. I think that’s where my cheerleading background helped a lot of like remembering a routine and being in front of a crowd. And honestly, it was never the crowd that I was afraid of. It was more so coming back and making sure Tony’s happy, or whoever my coach was — Dustin Rhodes — is happy with what I just did, and whether or not what I did makes sense … that is more so what I was scared of.”
On deciding the join the House of Black and taking on a darker character:
“I just needed to take myself more seriously. I think in the cheerleader role, I looked at the cheerleader as like an annoying preppy girl, because I was a cheerleader all of high school. That’s how we were always looked at, you know, just the annoying preppy girls. But, I was never really like that. I was never smiling. I always wore baggy clothes and a jacket with a hood over my head in high school. When I got to AEW, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you’re so cute. You’re so bubbly. Like, do this, this, and this.’ So then it was really hard for me to be aggressive, because I’m this cute, bubbly little girl. I don’t know how to translate that to make me serious. It wasn’t until I saw what they were about to do with House of Black, and I was like, I think I could do that. They asked me to do a promo for them and I did it. And they’re like, ‘Oh, you do have something to you. You are more than just a little girl.” They were like, okay. And I was like, I guess okay, we’ll see. And then it took four months for me to actually join the group and I was just patiently waiting.”
