Natalya talks about new Diva and Tough Enough runner up Mandy joining the cast, how Rosa Mendes’ pregnancy will change the show, and more. You can read a few excerpts below:
Natalya comments on Mandy (Amanda Saccomanno) joining the show:
“I’ve only known Mandy from Tough Enough. My husband and I watch everything on the Network, we watch anything WWE – Raw, SmackDown, Tough Enough – so we would watch it every week. I actually really liked her on the show. I thought she stood out because she had a lot of personality. Joining Total Divas I didn’t know how she would be, because everybody’s really nice when you first meet them – but so far I really get along with her.
She’s very genuine, believe it or not. It’s funny because you would look at her and think she has the potential to be a quote-unquote ‘Diva’. She’s beautiful and has obviously got an awesome body and she could have a lot of attitude, so to speak, just based off of how she looks. But I feel like she brings the right attitude. After spending time with her I feel like she’s really genuine. I feel like she makes a great cast member.
“Obviously I don’t choose who joins our cast but when I work with new people – new girls, new guys – I always try to treat them how they treat me, and judge them based on my own experiences with them. There’s nothing worse than judging a book by its cover, so I really like her.”
Natalya comments on Mandy’s ‘ring rat’ insults towards Sara Lee:
“I think she’s getting thrown into the deep end. Obviously you go from being a normal person living a normal life, to all of a sudden being tossed in at the deep end of the Divas division, you’re going to go through your ups and downs. But she seems to have a thick skin and she seems to be genuine. From what I’ve seen of her in the last few months she’s been pretty consistent. I look for that a lot in people.”
There have been some people that I’ve known for eight years that have been up, down and everything in between and not consistent. One minute they’re your friend, the next minute they hate you, the next minute they like you, the next minute they don’t want to look at you. I’ll take consistency all day long. I strangely enough give her my endorsement because she’s treated me with respect and even the one time that I trained with her at the Performance Center in Orlando, Florida, she wanted to work hard.
Granted yes, she’s human. She’s going to make all sorts of rookie mistakes because that’s what we all do when we’re new. But I feel like she wants to work hard, I feel like she’s genuine, and I feel like she’s tough – I think she’ll be okay.”
Natalya comments on Rosa Mendes’ pregnancy factoring into the show:
“It’s definitely a different aspect. It’s good because it’s added a whole new layer to Total Divas that we’ve never seen before. We’ve seen weddings, we’ve seen family health issues, we’ve seen people that want to get married that aren’t getting married, we’ve seen people that are married.
The fact that she’s doing something that’s a first ever for our show is cool and I think it will bring a lot of interest to the viewers. It’s cool – it shows that WWE is celebrating women that are of every walk of life. The company is really embracing Rosa’s pregnancy which is a huge testament to WWE embracing not only diversity but also supporting women.”
