Jeff Hardy was interviewed by In This Corner Podcast and gave some details about which legends inspired his face-paint movement and talked about the evolution of his Brother Nero character. The YouTube video is below, but there are some snippets you can read as well (transcription credit goes to Wrestling Inc.):
On his face-paint inspiration:
“I was a combination of Sting and the Ultimate Warrior,” Hardy said. “Sting at the time was in NWA, or when it became WCW, and the Warrior was in WWE. The Warrior was crazy but Sting’s would be different every night when he was the blonde haired Sting, and that’s what I loved about him I was like ‘How does he come up with these ideas?’ And I saw him one night in Fayetteville, North Carolina and the music came on and I reached out and touched him on the shoulder and I’ll never forget feeling… like I want to make somebody feel like he made me feel. Here I am, hopefully, having the same influence on young, up-and-coming, wannabe wrestlers.”
On applying his face-paint and “eyes upon eyelids” origins:
“I did it in a YouTube video years ago,” Hardy exclaimed. “I thought to myself, ‘I should do this when I come out to the ring.’ I had this vision and then I started doing it in TNA years ago and I was working my butt off every night. Doing an Instagram picture would be different every night. So to be here in WWE doing it now it’s very surreal to me, and that people are actually digging it, it’s only going to get better.”
On the development of Brother Nero character:
“It’s a lot of work,” Hardy said. “I think it’s a modified Brother Nero, because you know naturally when Matt became ‘Woken’ it was a little different than Broken. So I think this is my version of the new Brother Nero and it’s gonna only evolve more. That’s why I broke out the white contacts, I figured why not?”