“Mr. McMahon” producer Matt Maxson discussed Vince McMahon‘s interviews in the docuseries about the former WWE Chairman.
The Netflix docuseries premiered on September 25, and it features interviews with Vince McMahon that were recorded before his initial retirement in 2022. McMahon discusses various topics about his life and career in the docuseries.
In an interview with Kevin Iole, “Mr. McMahon” producer Matt Maxson discussed working with Vince McMahon and reflected on his interviews. (H/t Corey Brennan of Fightful for the transcription)
“I also think, you know, Chris Smith, who is the director of the series, has no background in professional wrestling,”Maxson said. You know, we would always kind of bring to him, it was David Shoemaker, who was one of our consulting producers from The Ringer. I grew up in the 90s in wrestling, so I have the institutional knowledge of these type of things. But also, one of my other colleagues, Eric Malloy, didn’t have that type of knowledge. So we would all kind of be this brain trust filtering through Chris and be like, hey, this is what matters. This is it.
“But Chris had this beautiful thing of letting a silence be awkward. Sometimes as a reporter or as a producer, you want to fill the thing or you want to walk your interview subject into the next thing and he would say something and he would just let him sit in it. Sometimes the longer he sat in it, he realized how uncomfortable it could be. Or he’d just be like a quick follow up. Like, what do you mean?
‘Mr. McMahon Producer’ On Vince McMahon’s Interviews
Maxson continued to discuss Vince McMahon’s interviews. He stated that McMahon was not a reliable narrator, and the team set that up in the beginning.
“So many of those things made it into the series that you can see that it’s not just necessarily passion,” Maxson said. It’s asking things he’s never heard before. It’s, you know, taking a look at things or being introspective. There’s a moment in the series that I don’t think anybody else has caught on to as much as, you know, things have kind of got like Phil Mushnick ‘because he’s a dirtbag’ or things like that. Nice to be able to do it.
“But there’s a moment where he says, you know, there are times where I, you know, what I say isn’t necessarily what I mean. That was just such a fulfilling thing. He’s like, I’m the chairman of the board. I’m not going to tell you the truth. We even set that up at the very beginning. He’s not a reliable narrator. But, you know, Chris did many subtle ways of getting that out that I just think was just such an art form and really was able to allow us to show him in a much different way.”
The video can be seen here:
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