Jimmy Hart‘s promos in professional wrestling were always ab-libbed, so working from a script for a television show proved to be quite a change of pace for him.
WWE Hall of Famer, “The Mouth of the South” Jimmy Hart, was recently interviewed by WrestleZone’s own Bill Pritchard to discuss his legendary career in professional wrestling. During the interview, Hart’s appearances on the show Baywatch were brought up, and Hart told a funny story about one of his scenes with Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff:
“You know what was so cool about it. We did a show called Thunder in Paradise with Hulk, and all of us,” Jimmy Hart began. “So the same person that produced Baywatch produced Thunder in Paradise. So one day, they asked me to play a part on there. They wanted to bring Ricky Van Shelton in, who had a lot of country hits back then. And let me be like his manager, his tour guide, right. So I said, how do you want me dressed? Like Jimmy Hart! What kind of accent? Your southern accent! I said okay, and so they gave me the script and everything, but I got to have a really, really southern drawl and be his manager on it.
“The crazy part about it, I got one big scene with Pamela Sue Anderson and David Hasselhoff. So, buddy, I studied all this verbiage. Coming from the wrestling business in our era, we didn’t have scripts; we got to ad-lib. And I think that’s what was so good for us, which helped our characters because it wasn’t scripted. Everything was off the cuff. ‘Hey, you got a minute. You got two minutes. You got a minute and a half.’ Hit the town hit your effort from your heart; what are you going to do this opponent or what’s going to happen? So I think that was so special for us.
“So I learned the script. I stay in the room because we film four different days. Right? So I got a lot of my stuff done with Ricky. But here was my big moment. Pamela Sue Anderson, David Hasselhoff, I’m going, ‘Oh this is it,’ I learned this word for word. I get there to do it, and their whole thing was ad-lib. So everything I worried about I spent two days learning, and I got there, and I’m going oh my god, I don’t know where to even come in because I’m waiting for them and I learned their part too, and they go ‘Oh, we just ad-lib all this stuff.’ And I went, ‘Oh my god…’ but it turned out great. And so matter of fact, I just saw a replay of it about two months ago on TV on one of those network deals.”
Jimmy Hart appeared in two episodes of the hit series in two different roles. Hart first appeared as “Jimmy,” the touring manager of country singer Jesse Lee Harris (Ricky Van Shelton) in the season 4 episode “Western Exposure.” Martina McBride also appeared in the episode as Sadie Jennings.
Two years later, Jimmy Hart returned in a wrestling-related role as Hulk Hogan’s coach in the season 6 episode “Bash at the Beach,” which was a WCW-themed episode that also saw appearances by Randy Savage, Ric Flair and Kevin Sullivan.
READ MORE: Jimmy Hart Is A Big Fan Of Bianca Belair; Praises LA Knight’s Charisma, Showmanship
Do you remember Jimmy Hart’s guest spots on Baywatch? If not, are you interested in going back and checking it out? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
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