Salina de la Renta reveals the inspirations behind her on-screen character and her approach as a producer behind the scenes.
Salina de la Renta prides herself on being a hybrid performer in the professional wrestling world. Throughout her career, Salina has donned many hats, including those of wrestler, manager, announcer, and producer. During a recent appearance on The Wrestling Perspective Podcast, she discussed the influences behind her on-screen character and her role as a backstage producer. As Salina explains, both positions derive from multiple sources of inspiration.
“I would say that I go a lot harder when it comes to wrestling itself because I don’t play around when it comes to titles and championships. If we are fighting, we’re fighting and I’m going to give it my all. So when it comes to that, I become pretty fierce,” Salina said. “I would say that I get most of my inspiration from my mom. Latina moms are savages. I’ve learned to just bolt through life and get what I want, not at any cost. So my main inspiration has always been my mom.”
In addition to her mother, Salina noted that she also looks toward television and music for character ideas. “As far as studying people and professional wrestling, I actually never did that. I enjoy watching other people stuff, but I just feel like if I study somebody and I use their work as inspiration, then I am taking from myself. I’m playing myself, I’m being a copy of somebody. So in order to keep it more original, I searched for characters that are in TV series or mainstream music, like the Evil Queen (Regina Mills) from Once Upon a Time.”
“Her thing is she decided she’s not going to love anybody because that love is weakness. So when I heard that, I was like, ‘I’ll take that.’ So I take one little phrase from what she’s saying, and I actually believe it, that you can’t have love while you’re working. My boyfriend has nothing to do with wrestling because if you do, the minute you bring your family in, it gets messy. So that’s for that side.”
Producing Inspirations
From a producing standpoint, Salina said she received inspiration from a few places, including her church, her film studies in college, and MLW CEO Court Bauer.
“As far as my producer side, I grew up — I wasn’t always Jewish. I grew up in a Christian church, well, in a Christian cult. But that’s another talk for another day… I came from a dark place. But in in there, we did a lot of church plays. And I remember watching the director, and I always wanted to be her. I wanted to write my own things and create them. It started young, and then I decided to pursue film. I went to Valencia Community College. But I knew that community college is not going to do anything for me. So I got an associate’s degree so that I could get a scholarship at Full Sail University because there’s a $100,000 degree and I did not want to pay for it.”
“So a lot of my film knowledge comes from there. I also work for a company named Flying Peanut Productions. We make movies and reality TV and we produce shows like Rockville. So I get a little knowledge and everything that I do. I will say that I learned a lot from Court [Bauer] when I was at MLW a few years ago because he did let me executive produce a few episodes. I got to be pretty hands-on in the producing aspect and I love it,” Salina said. “I’m definitely not going to be an on-screen character for the rest of my life because I’m going to get older. I’m going to want to not do stuff, but I will never get tired of producing and creating. That’s my big passion.”
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