Zelina Vega was this week’s guest on Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia; you can read a few transcribed highlights and listen to the full show below:
I had actually seen Dwayne Johnson a few years before I met him, and I didn’t have the guts to talk to him, and I’d always regretted it.
At the Barclays Center, I was an extra [at WWE RAW] about five years ago, and he walked past me and looked at me and said ‘Hi, I’m Dwayne.’ And I’m like ‘Hi, I’m Thea.’ and he goes ‘Thea what?’ I go ‘Thea Trinidad’ and he says ‘oh, that’s a cool name. My name’s just Dwayne Johnson.’ And I’m like no duh, of course you are. He walked away and I felt myself going ‘no, Thea you need to talk to him. Stop being a wuss, just go and talk to him.’
He looked at me—he was talking to Rusev and Lana—he looked back at me, and he gave me the finger like to [motion to] come over here. And he’s like ‘you look like you have something important to tell me.’ I said ‘I don’t care if I never see you again, but I just feel like I need to say thank you to you’. I told him my story and why I’m here, about my Dad and how [The Rock] was his favorite and I said ‘we have all of these amazing memories because of you. I have some of the best memories with my Dad because of you, and I just wanted to say thank you so much because those are the ones that I really hold close to me along my journey to get here.’ And he was just like whoa, that’s so not what I thought you were going to say, and he gave me this big hug and said thank you for sharing that with me.
I thought sweet, I did it. Literally what I thought in my head—I walked away from him, and I looked up and I was like ‘Dad, I did it! I did it, I said it! He knows your name now’ That was such a big moment for me.
I didn’t think I’d ever see him again, but then I’d gotten a random text about a month later, maybe a little sooner. He said ‘I was reading some articles about your Dad and it just made our talk backstage so much more special. Again I wanted to say thank you for sharing that with me… guess who?’ And I thought this can’t be real, someone must be messing with me.
(Transcription credit to Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com)
Stephanie McMahon Reaches Out To Zelina Vega After Sharing Her Father’s 9/11 Story
Vega continued, saying she couldn’t believe someone as famous as The Rock would care about her, but said that couldn’t be further from the truth. She said The Rock cares so much about people and she thinks her story just resonated with him.
She said they became friends shortly after this, and he has motivated her throughout her career like she believes her father would have. Vega said they send motivational messages to each other and he believed in her when no one else did, saying he probably doesn’t know how much she appreciates him.
