AEW Executive Jennifer Pepperman Discusses The Similarities Between Wrestling And Soap Opera

AEW's recent recruit, three-time Daytime Emmy Award winner and former WWE Senior Writer, Jennifer Pepperman, knows a thing or two about writing and directing drama, whether it's in the form of soap opera stories or professional wrestling programs. 

In an interview on "AEW Unrestricted," the Vice President of Content Development spoke about the similarities between the two from her tenured success in both fields. She stated that she wasn't a fan of pro wrestling initially, but noted how soap operas and pro wrestling have a lot in common.

"I realized that professional wrestling is like this magical, beautiful art form, and one of the things that I was first really taken by was that the audience is actually like a character," she revealed. "So, after I'd been working for a couple of months, I had this sort of like 'a-ha' moment. I was like, you know, dramatically, it's not that different than a soap opera, except in professional wrestling, you have a good guy and a bad guy in dramatic conflict, but that conflict is solved by fighting in a wrestling ring. Whereas in a narrative drama, it's solved by, you know, someone gets shot, someone gets stabbed, people fall in love, people get divorced, someone's cheating on someone ... but the conflict [of wrestling] is solved by fighting in the ring."

Pepperman's work so far in AEW has not gone unnoticed. While contributing to both the men's and women's storylines in the promotion, she is also the behind-the-scenes visionary of Mercedes Mone's creative direction, with whom she struck a working relationship with in WWE.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "AEW Unrestricted" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.