During an appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show, Natalya opened up about her WWE career, the transition from Vince McMahon to Triple H and TKO, and how it has impacted her mindset after nearly two decades in the company.
Natalya spoke about the pressure she felt under Vince McMahon’s leadership, revealing that she spent years trying to be the “perfect” WWE superstar, largely due to her father, Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart’s career struggles.
“To be brutally honest, growing up in the business with a parent like Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart… my dad is, you know, one of my greatest inspirations in my life. But growing up, my dad lost his job a lot. So for me, subconsciously, even before I ever got to WWE, I always had this fear of like, I have to make everyone happy. I have to please everyone. I have to be the company girl. I have to be everything that my dad wasn’t. I have to be perfect. So whatever Vince wants me to do, or whatever my boss wants me to do, I just have to do what they want me to do.”
With Triple H, Nick Khan, and TKO now in charge, Natalya says she no longer feels pressured to be “perfect” and is finally allowed to be herself in WWE.
“I feel like now, for the first time in my 18 years of being in WWE and having grown up in it, I always felt… I just always felt like I had to be perfect. Especially when Vince McMahon was in charge, like I just had to be perfect. I had to show him that I was going to be the exact opposite of what my dad was. I could be so professional, and I could just do everything that everybody wanted and say all the right things and do all the right things. What I love right now is that Triple H and the powers that be, Nick Khan and our bosses, they’re not expecting us to be perfect. They’re letting us be real.”
With WWE’s creative and management landscape shifting, Natalya appears to feel more comfortable than ever, embracing the freedom to be authentic after years of striving for perfection.
