Lana Recalls Spending 19 Hours At A WWE TV Taping For A 60-Second Segment

CJ Perry - formerly known as Lana in WWE - has opened up on how mental the promotion's television filming schedule could be during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

WWE took their weekly Raw, SmackDown and NXT shows back to the Performance Center at the very start of the coronavirus pandemic last year and pre-taped almost all of their content in the initial weeks and months as the world tried to come to grips with the devastating virus.

The swap from live television to pre-taped shows meant a lot of waiting around for talent and Perry has recalled how, on one occasion, she was required to wait 19 hours to put together a backstage segment that lasted less than a minute.

Speaking on Talk Is Jericho about recording television during the Pandemic, Perry said: "We were supposed to do on Mondays Raw and a SmackDown afterwards, and then the following day a Raw and a SmackDown afterwards. One time I was there for 19 hours to do a 60-second backstage. I’m not even kidding, it was insane. Rewrites."

Perry also revealed that the nature of pre-taped television allowed a lot of time for WWE Chairman Vince McMahon to change his mind on various ideas and demand rewrites, telling a story about how she was initially involved in Chelsea Green's WWE main roster debut, which was then scrapped.

"One time Nattie and I, we did this whole segment with Mickie James and they debuted Chelsea [Green]… I was managing Nattie, it was the first time I was managing her, and Chelsea was supposed to debut with Mickie. We did it all, we went home. I’m in bed and we get a call from one of the writers that they’re cutting it. Vince looked at it and said, ‘No. Cut the whole thing.’ And we had to go back to film another backstage, all of it. Chelsea didn’t debut.

"It was just like constantly weird stuff like that that it was just once we went to live television I was so excited. I was like, ‘Yay! We can’t rethink it. It’s out there, oh well, for better or for worse.’"

If you use any of the quotes in the article above, please credit The Talk Is Jericho Podcast with a H/T to Cultaholic Wrestling for the transcription.