Natalie Eva Marie discusses the influence of Total Divas.
What started out as a spotlight on the lives of WWE’s female superstars, grew into something much bigger for Total Divas. After premiering in the summer of 2013, Total Divas racked up nine seasons before wrapping up in December 2019. Along the way, viewers received an inside look at the lives of various WWE Divas on the road and at home. One of the prominent cast members of the earlier seasons was the red-headed superstar, Natalie Eva Marie.
WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard recently spoke with Natalie Eva Marie about the reality series. While the show has undoubtedly reeled in some new eyes to wrestling, Eva Marie questioned if Total Divas gets the true recognition it deserves.
“I don’t know if it gets the recognition that it necessarily deserves. But I do think that it definitely put a whole nother spotlight, and it brought in a whole other demographic into WWE,” she said. “I feel like there’s so many people that I meet where they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, watching Total Divas. It made my girlfriend or my wife interested in wrestling.’ And so I think in that realm, I think it did so much, and not only that but it just kind of opened up that different demographic of people that normally wouldn’t tune into Monday Night RAW or a Friday Night SmackDown.”
“I think I’m really fortunate and grateful for the show because it definitely gave me a platform that I had no idea that it was going to give me. It just really kind of peeled back the curtain of a WWE Diva — or now obviously Superstar — so I do think that it kind of launched that kind of evolution before everybody else kind of caught on. So maybe it doesn’t get the recognition or the love that it probably should get, but it did a lot, I feel, like for wrestling and not only that, for the females as well.”
Though Eva Marie doesn’t believe Total Divas may get the full love it deserves, the series has influenced several of today’s performers, including former MLW talent Salina Del La Renta.
After departing from WWE in 2017, Eva Marie made a return to the company in 2021, forging an alliance with DouDrop (Piper Niven). Upon her return, Eva Marie adopted a more stuck-up celebrity type of persona. Prior to her return, Eva Marie’s character was still a heel, but the basis of that character was centered around her various attempts and excuses to evade actually wrestling in the ring. When discussing the possibility of tying in her former storyline into her most recent work, Eva Marie enjoyed the idea.
“That would have been gold,” she said. “I feel like that would have been super great. And so many things get thrown around the writer’s room, and certain things are supposed to go a certain way. And then, it’s WWE TV. So sometimes, they don’t play out that way. But I think that would have been a fantastic idea.”
Watch our full interview with Natalie Eva Marie below:
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