David Otunga, husband of Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Hudson, special guest star on CBS’ Criminal Minds, and arguably 12th-most important WWE announcer, is trying to get more and more into acting these days, but he has already faced a steep uphill climb trying to cross over. Yes, even after his guest spots on General Hospital. But luckily, he’s friends with Dave Bautista, who has been through all of this before.
Otunga explained to TV Insider that when he first began attempting to follow in the footsteps of his spectacularly successful wife, he talked to the one and only Drax The Destroyer about the challenges he would face in the entertainment industry when making the leap from WWE.
“I talked to Dave Bautista on the Guardians of the Galaxy set, and he was saying how it was interesting that WWE doesn’t necessarily translate right to Hollywood because they are acting like he doesn’t have any credits,” Otunga said. “This guy is a six-time world champion and has main-evented WrestleMania. They don’t get it. That’s the same way for me. There was also the stigma I would face that, ‘Oh, he is a wrestler. He is not really a good actor.’ They don’t really give you a chance. Then it becomes trying to get the part without people realizing you are a wrestler. So basically you start over from zero. Well, actually you are in the negative because you have to work extra hard just to get up to the same level as the people you are competing against.”
It remains one of the most baffling things ever that being on weekly television for three hours every week doesn’t qualify wrestlers for SAG cards, but it is what it is. And thanks to like 50 years of wrestlers hollering “I’M GONNA KICK YOUR ROTTEN STINKIN’ TEETH DOWN YOUR GARBAGE THROATHOLE” have given wrestlers a very difficult stigma to overcome. I mean, say what you will about 2017 promos being “overly scripted” but I’ll take a cookie-cutter promo where a guy sounds close to a real person over bad Road Warrior insults.
