Chelsea Green Reveals Changes Zack Ryder Helped Her Make To Her TNA Character

As previously noted, Chelsea Green, f.k.a. Laurel Van Ness in Impact Wrestling, was the special guest on Women's Pro Wrestling Weekly with TK Trinidad and Evan T Match. You can watch it in the video above or download the podcast version on iTunes. Here are more highlights that they sent to us:

Coming up with the Laurel Van Ness character:

"I started on Impact Wrestling as just a typical mean girl, Regina George [character in Mean Girls movie] knockoff. I was bored with it. I feel like that is what every girl falls into when they are trying to be a heel girl character. I just find it overdone, and unless you can do it really well it becomes overdone. They kind of threw me a bone when they gave me a storyline with Allie and husband Braxton Sutter where I was able to get married. As we were planning this marriage segment and I am going to be left at the altar, I thought to myself, okay, how can I make this as dramatic as possible and make this as different and ridiculous. At this stage, nobody is talking about my character. Nobody is talking about a girl that is a typical blonde, mean girl that is on television. That is just not something people care about. When we got into doing the segment on television, I was the most dramatic human on the planet. I would stay crying. I would drink champagne. I would throw flowers around, and when I got into the back when the segment was done, Dutch [Mantell] was there saying, 'oh my gosh, that was absolutely brilliant!'. 'We need to film something, anything, where you are continuing on this mental breakdown.' That is what it looks like you are doing in the ring, you are having a mental breakdown. So, we sat down in the makeup room and I sat on the floor and he told me to smear my lipstick, and I said that it isn't going to work because my lips are my skin color so it's not going to work. He told me to put on red lipstick, but I told him that during the scene I didn't have red lipstick on, he said to me to put it on and smear it. He then told me to wet my face a little so my makeup can be smeared. He said to act crazy and sing a song and do something crazy. I am sitting there with makeup smeared, sitting on the ground with no shoes on. Being an absolute nutcase. I am not joking, I didn't think that it was ever going to be used, but all of it aired and it was one of the most-watched segments of that year. From there, we just carried on the craziness."

How boyfriend Zack Ryder helped her develop the character:

"I think the great thing is about my character is that talking with someone, someone always has some sort of suggestion because they can relate my character with a crazy ex-girlfriend, or a psycho mom or psycho sister, or a drunk-hot mess that they saw at the bar last week. You can relate it to whoever you want. With that comes these amazing suggestions from people. I get caught up in this character thinking that I have to go one way or another to the point that I believe that I need to be this drunk girl that never wrestles, but my boyfriend [Zack Ryder] takes a step back and says to me that I can take this character into whatever direction I want it to go. I should also stop making the character drunk, but instead, I should make her a psycho. You need a snapping point, and with that snapping point how would the crowd know that I snapped? He suggested having my lipstick slipped to me and that becomes my 'thing.' That is my weapon so the crowd knows that this is it, she is turning it up, and the match doesn't become what it was before. Those little kind of pointers is where he helps me with. Where in the match I should make it happen and where it should happen, but I mean, really, there are fans that help me with this. There are fans that help me with certain suggestions where even I hadn't thought of it and I end up using it."

Dating Zack Ryder:

"At first we based on our relationship on everything but work, and I think that is what helped us and how we fell in love because on our first date we didn't talk about wrestling. Like I said, I don't know wrestling. I don't know the things he has done in the past. He tells me stories, but I am not sitting there thinking that I already knew that and that I was watching it on YouTube. I genuinely have no idea, but I love it and am interested in it.

"Of course, it is hard when we are on the road. Last week he was in Europe so we didn't see each other for several weeks, but on the other hand, we are both doing the same thing and we are doing this together on the same team. I know what he is going through when he can't call me and vice versa. I believe it is the best thing in the world to trust each other. I know when he is not texting me, I know he is busy at work and I am busy too, so it's great. It's hard. It's a job, but that is kind of what every relationship is and you just try to make it work. This past week it was harder than usual because he wasn't home all week while I am sitting at home Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and Thursday, but the minute the weekend hits I am off to the indie shows, I am off doing business so it is totally fine. It definitely is tough when one person is really busy and the other is sitting at home, but we rarely have that, so we have been lucky."