Cody Rhodes recently spoke with IGN.com‘s Matt Fowler in advance of his guest starring role on The CW show Arrow tonight.
Rhodes, who plays super villain Derek Sampson, talks about working with former Summerslam opponent and Arrow star Stephen Amell, comic book influencing his look in WWE and more. You can read a few excerpts below:
Cody Rhodes talks about his role as Derek Sampson:
It was killer. They did so well by me and I was so excited to be a part of it. They made me cooler than I ever thought I could be. I felt like a supervillain, but a street-style supervillain. I think for people who were fans of the interaction between Stephen and I as far as the WWE was concerned and SummerSlam – the episode itself, which is completely unrelated, it’s funny, it’s incredibly physical and picks up kind of where we left off from where we were in the ring. So it’s pretty generous in terms of its action. It was also very kind of the stunt team, on Arrow, to let me do so many of my own stunts. Stephen does so much of his own work so this was a very enriching experience.
Cody talks about the Stardust character and other gimmicks being influenced by comic books:
I think for me, internally, the entire thing was a comic book. In terms of psychologically thinking about it, I approached it like a symbiote, like Venom, taking over my initial persona. Especially since I’d wrestled for the prior eight years as myself and here was this drastic departure. I was treating it like this symbiote thing. That’s what I would say to myself in my head. Then performance-wise, people know I was just stealing flat out from Frank Gorshin and Jim Carrey’s Riddlers. I’d watch the scene where he blew up the Batcave and study how he moved around and just plucked some of that out in certain ways. In my mind, it was a mash-up of different comic book influences. I loved the idea that I had an alter-ego but that my true identity was very well known and very much on the surface. I was the only one who didn’t know who Stardust really was. So it was very much tied to comics. Everything I’ve done. I did a whole run where I’d wear a face mask when I was on SmackDown and that was based on Dr. Doom. Comics and me go way back.
Cody talks about his wife Brandi Rhodes starting her in-ring career with TNA:
I think it’s really exciting for me to see Brandi branch out. Because when you look her up and see her pictures online and see that she was this bikini model, it doesn’t tell you that she’s got a degree from the University of Michigan or that she attended the master’s program and the University of Miami. She has a business savvy mind and because of her years as a figure skater, where she damn near became a professional figure skater, she has this athletic background. So it’s the best to be able to show fans a different side of yourself and they hadn’t been able to see that. So to be able to do what we did in TNA, and to be able to go out to shows together, it’s wonderful. Someone took a picture of me at a show the other day where I was filming her like a soccer mom. She’s doing great.
