Sonya Deville recently sat down with CBS affiliate WKBN to talk about breaking down barriers in WWE. While the talking point about Sonya is typically her being the first openly-gay female superstar, that rarely crosses her mind.
Deville said, “I mean, it’s not something that I ever think about like that, right? It’s always just like, ‘Yeah, I am who I am, and I’m a WWE superstar.’ But obviously, I realize the effect and influence it has on other members of the LGBTQ community, and I love being a part of that. That change in that kind of power that I can give to them, like, ‘Hey, if I can do it, you can do it. And if I can be myself unapologetically, so can you. And you should never be ashamed or afraid of who you are or who you love.”
Sonya said that she hopes WWE will introduce more LGBTQ components to their programming. While she is openly gay, nothing about her onscreen character portrays being openly gay. She said, “Just as you would have a male superstar on the phone with their wife in a backstage segment or interacting with another female, you just have two females or two males interacting, you know, or maybe I’m on the phone with my girlfriend while you’re filming backstage, you know, something like that, that just allows the inclusivity to be there and not in a forced inorganic way, kind of just how it is in life.”
With WWE revisiting Youngstown over the weekend, WKBN is an affiliate in the area and asked Sonya what it was like performing in an empty arena ahead of their return to having fans live in Ohio. She said, “It was definitely an adjustment. Obviously a lot of what we do, we’re very interactive, and we listened to our fans a lot in the audience, a lot. So it was definitely an adjustment, just not waiting for reactions and not planning on hearing any because you want it and just kind of honing the craft and really just focusing on what we were doing in the ring and brought aside a whole new set of challenges that us as performers aren’t used to normally. The whole point is to be in front of a crowd. So yeah, it was kind of like the opposite.”
You can read the entire interview here.
READ MORE: WWE SmackDown Sets GIANT Center Record, Reigns & Heyman Hug It Out After
