Incomparable
Page 2
I got a boob job in 2012. What can I say, I had always, always wanted big boobies, particularly since mine just disappeared after I started to get really fit for wrestling. It took me a long time to make the $6,500 to pay for them. I have never messed with my face—intentionally, that is. In 2008, weeks before our main stage debut when we were still down in Florida at FCW, I was with another wrestler looking at a magazine that we had all been featured in. He was sitting up on the apron, when another guy—whose stage name was Sweet Daddy Sanchez—hit the ropes. It ricocheted back and hit this guy, Jack Swagger, whose massive face collided with mine. He sent me flying—I literally caught air and flew several feet—and my nose just busted open. It was like being head-butted by The Rock.
Nattie Neidhart (Natalya), who was wrestling down in Florida with us at the time, rushed me to the locker room. I didn’t want to tell anyone because it was hours before a match, so I mopped up the blood, iced my nose, and slathered on about two inches of foundation. I wrestled that night and then went to the trainer, who told me that not only had I shattered my nose, but I had suffered a mild concussion as well. Brie was with Craig, her boyfriend at the time, back in Los Angeles, and so another wrestler named Nic was nice enough to keep me awake all night (not like that you pervs!). The next morning, I looked like a dinosaur—you couldn’t see the bridge of my nose or even my eyes. And I have a black eye on my right side to this day from stuck blood, which no doctor or dermatologist or acupuncturist has been able to fix. When we were brought up to the main roster a few weeks later, they decided to minimize my time in the ring (i.e., my face in front of an HD video camera) until my face had more time to heal—the thing about being an identical twin is that you’re supposed to look identical.
Brie
Speaking of boob jobs, I will never get one—though it had been one of the first questions from WWE when we showed up at Diva Search at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey about a year and a half earlier. “Are you open to a boob job?” We flipped out, and started to tell them off, escalating to about a 10 in just a few seconds in true Bella fashion. We had shown up that morning with a lot of excitement and definitely ready to wrestle. As soccer players—Nicole was toying with the idea of moving to Italy to play professionally before I dragged her to the audition—the idea of sports entertainment seemed made for us. We made tank tops—“Breezy Fo Sheezy” and “Nicole Fo Sho”—and put on bandanas and sneakers in anticipation of getting to fight. (We weren’t worried that neither of us had ever actually been in a ring.) What we found instead was a long line of girls dressed like go-go dancers. The girl in front of us, Layla, was beautiful. She was also dressed like an athlete, and so the three of us marveled at the spectacle around us, confused and a little concerned. While she ended up going on to win Diva Search (she did not need a boob job), we didn’t make it to the final eight. But Kristin Prouty, who worked in talent for WWE, convinced them to send us to a developmental wrestling facility in McDonough, Georgia, called Deep South. I guess she thought we had what it would take to fight in that ring and win.
Nicole
Now, before everyone gets up in arms about the Diva Search go-go dancing casting call comment, Brie and I were Hooters girls. And once you are a Hooters girl, you are always a Hooters girl. And as a woman, I firmly believe it is every woman’s prerogative to use what God gave her and screw the haters (not literally). I think we found the audition outfits troubling and the boob job comment offensive because we thought we were there as athletes. Sexy athletes, sure—but not just there to be ringside eye candy. After all, we had seen the WWE’s “Attitude Era”—a time in the late 1990s to early 2000s when women were expected to fight in bras and thongs, pull each other’s hair, and then make out in the ring. That time was supposed to be over, replaced by a more family-friendly WWE, where women were allowed to actually wrestle.
Our brother, JJ, who is two years younger, loved the Attitude Era. He watched wrestling all the time when he was a kid—he was obsessed particularly with The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin. He would follow us around and try to take us down with his finisher, which he called “The Priest.” It was a gimmick where he would make the sign of the cross and then give us the “Holy Elbow,” which involved him dropping his arm on our heads. He was in the fourth or fifth grade and was a little shit, so it was pretty annoying. Brie and I hadn’t thought about wrestling much beyond evading JJ until we landed jobs at a California Hooters when we were eighteen.
Brie
After high school, we both needed to get out of Arizona for different reasons (that we’ll get to in a bit). So we enrolled in Grossmont Community College in San Diego. We had been born there, and we had family nearby. Our grandparents stretched to pay for our housing—at “The Conq,” no less. It was a famous party dorm on the San Diego State University campus where my mom had gotten drunk a lot when she was young. (“Oh great, that’s where they’re putting you?” was her response when we shared the good news.) And despite our parents’ divorce a few years earlier, our mom scraped together enough money to cover our first-semester tuition. But we needed cash to pay for food and books. And when you’re in college, nothing brings in the dollar bills like waitressing.
It’s actually hard to get a waitressing job when you’re underage, because you can’t serve hard alcohol. The only place that was hiring eighteen-year-olds was Hooters, since they’re wine and beer only. The Mission Valley outpost was actually the highest performing franchise in the world, probably because it was right after 9/11 and we were at war. All the military guys from Camp Pendleton came hungry and often. And they were amazing tippers: God bless the military. They definitely paid for a lot of our textbooks, and, if we’re honest, beers at Bennigan’s after our shifts, trips to Tijuana, and ho heels. Because they didn’t have much to spend their money on, they would come in straight off the ship and leave a $20 tip on a $30–$50 tab. With a menu of cheap beer and chicken wings, it’s hard to get the tab north of that. And they would never skip out on the bill. (A note on waitressing: Not only does your waitress have to pay your bill if you skip, but the government assumes a 20 percent tip take-home, so if you leave less than that, she has to pay taxes on money she didn’t actually make. So no, you’re not actually giving a middle finger to the establishment, you’re just screwing over someone who is probably living paycheck to paycheck.)
Nicole
Working at Hooters was the best. Many of our closest friends to this day were made there. The pantyhose we had to wear are still our ride-or-die go-to in the WWE (they hold everything in), and we were invited to all the best parties. And unexpectedly, we always felt protected. It’s funny because when we went in for our Hooters interviews, we wore multiple bras (pre–boob job, remember?), thinking that being flat-chested would be a dealbreaker. But it wasn’t really like that. Plus, we had the whole twin thing going.
My first night on the job, some jerk slapped my ass so hard he left a red rooster on my butt cheek. I assumed that was just the sort of thing that happened at Hooters. I told a fellow waitress about it under my breath. “He did what?” she asked, followed by a quick “Where is he?” In under a minute, the manager and one of the line cooks had kicked him out and called the cops. A few years later, when I was a Hooters veteran and tolerated no bullshit, a bunch of Raiders football players came in to eat before playing against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Super Bowl. They were rowdy, and one of the players grabbed me by the hair, bent me over, and pretended to do me doggy style. I flipped out and kicked them all out, Super Bowl be damned. You had to be a strong type of girl to work there—if it wasn’t contending with ass slappers and boob grabbers, then it was dealing with people who judged your value system for putting on the tank top and serving beer in the first place. But I have never played the victim or the martyr—and I have certainly never felt compelled to ask permission to do what I want. Brie and I both learned at a young age how to take care of ourselves. And we both knew how to work the system to make some bank. I felt empowered, like I could con
quer the world—and I dared any man to fuck with me without getting a fist to the face.
Brie
As a Hooters waitress, there was one drawback, and those were the monthly pay-per-view WWE weekend matches. The guys would post up for three hours and nurse a soda and some cheese fries while they watched wrestling. Tying up a table like that without ordering a banquet is a bummer for a waitress unless you’re going to compensate with a massive tip. (They didn’t.) The WWE fans at the time were intense. One guy even brought his collection of troll dolls. He would arrange them in a semicircle across a four-top and blow on them for good luck. It was still the Attitude Era and the show was essentially rated R. You didn’t get the young girl fans, then, and as a woman it was hard to watch even though you could tell the ladies actually knew how to wrestle. Now the young girls look at us like we’re Wonder Woman. But back then, the female wrestlers weren’t allowed to be heroes—it was more spectacle than sport. It made me angry that they didn’t give the women the same opportunities as the men.
Nicole
Back then, our heroes were Carla Overbeck, Brandi Chastain, and Mia Hamm, who had gone to the Olympics for soccer. I’ll never forget that Mia Hamm/Michael Jordan Gatorade commercial, where they faced off in different sports: “Anything you can do, I can do better.” Mia Hamm was better than any man. That was my belief system. I felt like that reality was within my grasp.
It was hard to leave Hooters, to be honest. The money was really good and we worked with all of our closest friends. They even give you benefits after you’ve been there for two years. And because we were all considered “entertainers,” they paid $8 an hour, instead of typical waitressing hourly pay. But Brie started working with an L.A.-based modeling agency and was getting called to the city more and more. Two of our Hooters friends wanted to come with us, and so we packed the car and drove north to Los Angeles to a cramped two-bedroom on La Cienega and Olympic.
At that point, we had done a few things. We were the first World Cup twins to tour with Budweiser in California; we were promotional models at conventions; Brie was a fitting model for DC Shoes. No massive breaks, but enough affirmation that we could make some extra money while we figured out what we wanted to do with our lives.
Brie
What we definitely wanted to do with our lives was have fun. We lived in a dump, but we all had the best time—except for Nicole, who was still involved with (and secretly married to) her high school boyfriend. The rest of us were all dating athletes, actors, people who had names—and the club scene in Los Angeles was on fire. I don’t know if it’s because it was before social media, but there was a freedom and lack of self-consciousness that was just so liberating. We would go, and dance, and beg for free drinks from the bartenders (bartenders will always be our weakness) until the clubs closed. Sunset would be a parking lot as we’d slowly crawl west for a late-night feast at Mel’s Diner.
I saw drugs for the first time at some of those parties, but I was never interested in that. My dad has struggled with addiction, particularly when we were kids, and so I had absolutely no curiosity. Beyond smoking the occasional joint with a group of friends—and a short stint in high school as a chain cigarette smoker—I was really just a beer girl. While I’ve grown up to be a wine snob, at the time, if you gave me a Bud Light I was thrilled. I think that’s one of the reasons people loved our group—we were just happy-go-lucky Cali girls. While our extended Hooters gang all came from broken homes and pretty unhappy childhoods, we were enjoying our liberation and excited for the next chapter. Because of that, or in spite of that, we were all relaxed and low-key. We also liked to eat, which was shocking to the guys who hung out with us. I’ll never forget when one of our friends ordered the meat platter, which was essentially a side of cow. The guy she was with couldn’t get over that she had not only ordered it, but intended to finish it, all by herself. “That’s just for you?” he kept repeating. Meanwhile, we thought she had made a great dietary choice since it didn’t have any carbs.
Nicole
We thought we should get real jobs while we auditioned, and so our friend Jayme, who was working as an assistant for the owner of an independent music label, hooked us up with A&R jobs. While the idea of listening to music for a living sounded cool in theory, we had no idea what we were doing. We would just eat our Baja Fresh burritos for lunch and put on our headphones. One day, the owner told us that Suge Knight was going to come by and that he might shoot up the joint. We knew it was a lie, but it was a weird enough one that we got in our car and decided to never come back. We had ninety-nine problems already, and didn’t need Suge Knight to be one of them. Though it was hard to imagine that he gave a shit about this particular independent music label.
I started working for Metalstorm Entertainment, who produced all the Quiksilver films. I was driving down to Oceanside every day from L.A., a commute that got really old, fast. So I ditched my sister and moved back to San Diego for my next chapter.
Brie
After Nikki left, I decided to go back to the career I knew best. I landed a job as a waitress at Sushiya, a popular Japanese joint on Sunset. A lot of celebrities and Hollywood types would come in, which is how I met Craig. He was the guitarist for a rock band, who I went on to date for five-and-a-half years (more on that later). I also met Jay Bernstein, a producer and manager (Farah Fawcett, Sammy Davis Jr., Suzanne Somers, Michael Landon), who told me there was something special about me. Now, when you’re a waitress in Los Angeles, you hear this sort of thing so often it triggers an immediate eye roll. But he convinced me to take a scholarship to Ivan Markota’s acting school. I figured, “Fuck it, I’m here in L.A., why not?” It was actually an amazing experience because it was my first formal introduction to acting. It made me both ask and answer the question of whether becoming an actress was something I actually wanted. The answer was no. At first, the classes were interesting, but very quickly it came to feel like I didn’t have the freedom to create in there. I was being told exactly how it needed to be done, and that didn’t capture my imagination. It felt boring. I called Jay and apologized. I told him that I simply didn’t want to follow a script. Acting in that way wasn’t for me.
I was hanging out with Craig in the L.A. music scene. It was an incredible experience and reawakening for me. I’ve always been really drawn to the arts, music, painting, and poetry, but it wasn’t something my parents prioritized. I craved the exposure. Art was also something that defined my high school boyfriend, Bear—in my eyes, artists were gods. In L.A. with Craig, I went to poker nights at Jerry Cantrell’s house for chrissakes—Alice in Chains was one of the soundtracks to high school for me. I got to travel to Europe for the first time when Craig was touring throughout Spain. He was a much bigger star internationally, and it was incredible to watch him move an arena through music. I was blown away by his power to transfix the crowd just through his ability to perform. I wanted to be able to do that, too. I was also blown away by the groupies, who were completely enthralled with him—their fanaticism for my boyfriend freaked me out!
While Sushiya was good to me, I needed to make more money. I got a cocktailing job at the Mondrian, a particularly scene-y hotel at the time on Sunset. You could work one or two nights a week and still make your rent. I’ve always been one of those people who needs a cushion, which I certainly wasn’t going to get from my parents. While Nicole is content to fly by the seat of her pants—she was known at the time for only having $10 in her bank account when rent was due—I’m a saver. I always prefer to live well within my means, and when you’re a waitress, your means aren’t high. I wanted the cushion, in part, so that I could travel with Craig when he toured. It was the first opportunity I had ever had to see the world. I’ve never been obsessed with owning nice things, but I wanted experiences.
Nicole
While Brie fell deeper in love with Craig, I was in a relationship black hole with a pro snowboarder. It was a period of extreme jealousy and codependence, and I was spending a lot of tim
e with him in Salt Lake City, where he lived near his ex-wife and kids. We traveled a lot for his snowboarding, and our existence in general revolved around him and his career. This was much to the dismay of Brie, who felt like I was putting everything on hold for a guy who was very controlling. (Sometimes when you’re in it, it’s hard to see it.)
My boyfriend agreed to spend some time with me in San Diego, and so I moved back to finish community college. I walked onto the soccer team, leading the girls to a state championship and landing myself MVP in California. My coach at the time thought I was very marketable and urged me to move to Italy to try to make it as a professional player. That sounded like a great idea if I could figure out how to make it work with my guy. But then Brie’s agent called her about the WWE Diva Search, and we decided to take another look at women’s wrestling.
Brie
There was no way that we weren’t going to do the wrestling training program at Deep South. Back then, there were two territories for wrestlers in developmental who had come up from the independents: Deep South Wrestling in McDonough, Georgia (DSW), and Ohio Valley Wrestling in Louisville, Kentucky (OVW). (Brock Lesnar, Dave Bautista, and many others all came up through OVW.) The Deep South session was three days long, though it felt like a week. It was a valid shot at getting put into developmental, as WWE scouted the talent down there, looking for girls who could fight. It was very Glow, in that nobody knew what they were doing. The key difference was that we weren’t all in it together—we were competing to get out of there as fast as possible. There were girls who were essentially stuck in Georgia, and they were pissed about it. They didn’t really have a shot at making it into developmental, but the coaches and trainers kept them around. They needed them to wrestle and train up the newcomers. They seemed to know this and were pissed about it, but weren’t willing to accept it and give up. Needless to say, they gave us a hard time. When we walked in, I remember one girl turning to her friend and saying, “Really? They don’t look like models.” (To be fair, at five-foot-six, I don’t think we looked like supermodels either—but at the time, WWE was scouting models and trying to turn them into wrestlers.) Some of the women down there definitely refused to teach us how to take bumps, instead giving us advice that almost guaranteed we’d get hurt. But that was just part of the drill and we got it. In fact, we relished it. They had told us to spend the time watching, but we insisted on getting into the ring the first day—we wanted to be sure we’d like it as much as we thought.