Maria Kanellis sat down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville, Tennessee to discuss how her journey from the Diva Search to wrestling in WWE, how the ditsy interviewer character was pitched to her, having matches with Umaga and Kurt Angle, posing for Playboy Magazine, her return with her husband Mike Kanellis, her pregnancy being used in a storyline, her new career after wrestling, if she is open to one more match, and more!

Do you feel like the door is still open for you to wrestle?

“I don’t know. In wrestling, you never know. I haven’t closed the door, but it’s not always up to the person.”

You could go have an indie match this weekend if you wanted to.

“That’s true. Wrestling probably not, unless it’s like the Royal Rumble or another Evolution pay-per-view or something like that. But consistently wrestling? Probably not. I think it’s so much fun, and those girls took care of me so well the last time I was there, so that’s great. I got to look awesome in the ring, much better than I am. It was so much fun. But wrestling consistently, probably not. When I got into wrestling, it wasn’t for wrestling.”

So you had a match with Umaga. Do you remember that day being pitched that you’re going to have this match?

“I remember working myself up backstage so that when I came out, I was shaking so that it would look more real and more believable. Because Umaga is one of the nicest, sweetest people in the world, and I didn’t feel that bump at all. He held me so tight, I didn’t feel hitting the mat.”

It’s such a vicious Samoan drop.

“Yes, but taking his booty to my face, that hurt. He had warned me to put my head back, and I thought I had my head back far enough, but he hit and it went all the way down my spine. I was like oh, good, I’m paralyzed after someone hit me with their butt! What a weird [world]. Yeah, it was good, good times.”

How did you get put in these positions? It wasn’t just Umaga.

“No, it wasn’t, and it was because I was willing. I was able to do it, and my character was so strong that when these guys would attack the sweet, innocent kind of dumb girl, then it really was evil. It really was a bad guy maneuver. So that’s how I got put in the position. Since I just tried to keep delivering.”

Talk to me about being in the ring with Kurt Angle:

“Man, he’s fast. He’s fast. I’ve never experienced someone so fast. He’s great. He’s sweet. He’s so funny in person. His wife is even funnier. I loved working with him. But yeah, I mean, and those guys back then had such a presence that we could have done nothing and still done everything. So every time I’m out there, I’m learning, I’m learning, I’m learning. But then we go to do this spot, and again, I didn’t even know what had happened. It was so fast, and the boys, they always protected me. They were always so good to me. I don’t know if I should say that or not, but they did. Whenever I had to wrestle one of the guys, I always felt great after. I never felt like something had happened to me.”

I thought the stuff you did with Santino was so fun!

“I used to have to bite my lip so that I wouldn’t laugh. So there’s this backstage promo we do, and he’s doing squats, and he goes, ‘The one, the two, the three, the four…’ and then he starts saying ‘125’ because I start walking up, and every time I was like busting the camera. I was like, ‘I’m so sorry. It’s so funny. I can’t help [it].’ So yeah, it was good times. He’s awesome.”

What do you think is the most misunderstood thing about the Divas era?

“That we didn’t care about wrestling, that we didn’t care about putting on the best match as possible. I didn’t get into the business to be a wrestler, but what I did get into the business for was to perform and to make people believe. So we cared deeply. We wanted more time. We wanted better stories. We wanted to be taken seriously. We were fighting backstage. We were fighting to not have to do a bikini competition. We were fighting to not have to do a water fight in the ring that was the most slippery thing ever. I’m bleeding as I’m coming back because we had slipped. Layla had thrown a forearm or something, and I slipped at the same time, and then my nose is just bleeding. Those matches, at times were fun, but at the same time they were a little dangerous. So we were fighting to be taken seriously, but the other thing was is we were having a good time, we were having fun doing those things. I look back and I think of it as some of my fondest moments is being able to perform with Ric Flair and perform with Cena, perform with The Rock and a lot of the a lot of the other guys that were there at that time. So yeah, I think that would be it.”

Was it a difficult conversation with WWE to say, ‘Hey, I know I just got re-signed recently, but I’m pregnant.’

“Yeah, because we weren’t planning it. We had tried when we were in Ring of Honor and TNA, and I thought it just wasn’t possible for us. I thought it was just something we would have to think about when we were much older and do IVF or something? So for us, it was this huge surprise, and we’re like what are we gonna do? Then Maryse and Miz made their announcement, and we’re like, well, we can’t tell them this week, so we had to wait. I’m like, well, starting to show a little, but we’ll just wear this baggy shirt and it’ll be all right. Oh man, it was scary. It was scary because we didn’t know what was going to happen. Then two weeks after we had found out is when Mike had told me that he was addicted to painkillers.”

WWE ends up turning your pregnancy into a storyline. Which is also like best-case scenario because they could have been like that’s great, congratulations, go home and have your baby and have your time. They turned it into something, which is pretty cool.

“Yes, they did the second time. So my first pregnancy, they didn’t. So what had happened was I had my daughter, and I was basically off television from like when I was 10 weeks until I came back at the Evolution pay-per-view. So then we’re talking to WWE and our contracts are about up, and I’m like, ‘Okay, just so you guys know, we would like to have another baby, and we’d like them to be close together. So if you don’t want us to do that, you could just let our contracts run out, but we’re gonna have a baby.’ So we were just figuring we would just go and work somewhere else, or Mike could just go work somewhere else, or he could just stay there, and I just wouldn’t sign. I had even offered, ‘Do you want me to just coach until after I have my second baby?’

So we were trying to negotiate that out of what it was going to be, and then they were like, ‘No, no, no, we want to just sign you. If you end up having another baby, great. If not, that’s fine. Vince loves babies.’ I’ll never forget Mark Carano saying that to me. ‘Vince loves babies.’ I went okay. So we end up getting pregnant, and we had just found out we were pregnant, and I get a call from Paul Heyman. We had just found out that Wednesday, I think we had found out, and I get a call from Paul on Thursday or something. He’s like, ‘So we’re gonna do the storyline with you and Seth and Becky and Mike…’ I was like, okay, cool. ‘So we want you to do a mixed tag match on Monday…’ I went, ‘What? Hang on. Paul, I’m pregnant.’ It’s funny because he had asked me, he said, ‘Do you think you can do the match?’ I went, ‘Paul, I’m pregnant. I can’t.’ So that’s how it got turned into a storyline. It was literally after negotiating about our contract, us re-signing, them knowing like this was the plan, and then gonna put us into this huge storyline, and Becky backstage is like, ‘Are you sure you want to announce on Raw? You don’t have to do this. This is private. If you want it to be private, it’s fine.’ I was like, ‘No, no, it’s fine. We’re good.’ So I announced it [mid-match].”