For non-fans, professional wrestling is a strange beast. Now imagine tasking one as the first to capture the chaos, confusion and total lack of kayfabe backstage. That’s the situation Chris Weaver — an NFL Films director used to filming, well, the NFL — stepped into for Netflix’s WWE: Unreal. His first chore? Learning the meaning of the word “kayfabe.”

kay·fabe
/ˈkāˌfāb/
noun
(in professional wrestling) the fact or convention of presenting staged performances as genuine or authentic.
“a masterful job of blending kayfabe and reality”

Lesson two was understanding how Paul Leveque, Triple H, Trips, HHH, H (and yes, “Hunter Hearst Helmsley”) is all one dude. Just wait ‘til Weaver finds out about blading…

All five episodes of the very all-access WWE: Unreal, which charts January’s 2025 Royal Rumble through April’s WrestleMania 41, are now available to obsessively binge stream on Netflix.

Read our Q&A with Weaver below.

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As a wrestling fan who already knows too much about the inner-workings, I didn’t want this show to happen — but it turned out really good and I got more out of it than I thought I would.

Thank you very, very much. I’ve heard a lot of people — both in the industry and in the wrestling world — say — not that they’ve seen the show — that they don’t like the premise and the idea, but they’re really interested. Yeah, and I’m gonna bounce a little praise back to you, Tony, which is, since the trailer came out — I don’t do a ton of reading and reacting to, or see what the reactions are — but you win for the best trailer headline, the CM Punk thing.

I learned some things — I didn’t know that (recent WWE Superstars) Bobby Roode and Jason Jordan were now producing matches, for example.

That was something that we were highly interested in explaining to the world, for that reason. We don’t know how much people know the business is run by, you know, wrestlers, so to speak. I think every single producer is a former wrestler.

Another surprise for me was just how professionally everybody — down to the writers — dressed. Was that striking for you as well?

Yes, is the short answer. I noticed it right away. It’s something that we— if this show were to continue, I want to [get into] that at some point, because it is striking. I noticed it right away. I have my opinions on why that might be, I don’t really know. And I’ve asked about that, like, “Do you guys dress like this all the time?”

These are long days when you go to — they call them “TV” — when you go to TV, when you go to these events, for us, it’s about a 14 hour day. It is for a lot of them as well. And I was like, “You guys wear this everyday, even on a 14 hour day?” We’re pretty dressed down — NFL Films [is] very informal. I wear collared shirts, but that’s about the extent of how dressed up I would really get.

But I do find it interesting. I’ve never asked— I’ve only asked a couple people that, I shouldn’t say I’ve never asked. But the people I’ve asked have their own speculations. It’s never been like— it’s not like a dress code, that’s my understanding. At least it’s not like you’re required to wear that. I think some of that might just be Vince [McMahon] did that. Vince might have had more of an edict on that — I’m not sure. Like you, I agree, it struck me when I first saw it.

Was the genesis of WWE: Unreal sort of a Netflix demand as a companion program to Raw? Was this sort of unprecedented access a caveat to that $5 billion deal?

You know, we did Quarterback and Receiver, another season of Quarterback with Netflix. So we already have an understanding of…their sort of expectations and their— what they expect in a follow series like this, because of history. Now, and I don’t want to go into Quarterback, except to say that I was heavily involved in that first season as well, and that was more of a journey of exploration. And I remember we— I watched [shows like Full Swing and Formula 1: Drive to Survive] when we were starting Quarterback, to just see how it was approached, and what the commonalities were…we learned more on those shows how to get to where we are in WWE: Unreal, but this is a different beast. So there were similarities and there were differences, but generally we had an understanding of what Netflix wanted.

You had very good access here, but we don’t see some places, like the locker room, which is considered sacred in wrestling. Where couldn’t you film?

That’s always my one of my fears is, I hope people don’t watch this and go, “Well, there’s not that much access” — so I love hearing you say that. When we started the process and we had our very first meetings (with WWE), we’re like, “Listen, we’ve seen a lot of stuff in our history here, and you gotta trust us. Let us just film it. You won’t regret…”— you’re basically asking them for trust. And they said, “Yep, we’re gonna let you.” And they did. I think the only thing I can think of— I don’t remember ever being told “no” to something. There may have been suggestions, like, “ Man, you don’t really want to do that,” or something. But we never got a hard “no” from WWE.

I will say, the first event we scouted— we scouted an event here in Philly, early on before we started actually filming. It was a Raw or SmackDown, I can’t remember honestly in November. We went to kind of get the lay of the land, and somebody had kind of said, “Listen, that’s the locker room. Don’t go in the locker room unless a wrestler tells you to come in the locker room. So that was sort of the only place I can remember. And again, it wasn’t, “Don’t go in there, but it was like, you’d be wise to be careful, because you don’t want to turn off somebody in there.” That’s the only thing I can think of.

Did you feel like an WWE talent or executives ramped it up for your benefit, or did you get the sense that their behavior was exactly what it would have been had your cameras not been there?

I mean, generally the latter. You can never really know how genuine anybody is — not just in wrestling — but how genuine anyone is when you put a camera in front of them, right? And what I would say is, the entire thing could have been “fake,” so to speak, or have been staged, or kayfabed, however you want to frame it. But if it is, they did such an exceptional job, I can live with it, so to speak. You know, CM Punk…crying after the WrestleMania (41), main event— I think that’s Phil Brooks having an emotional moment when he’s talking to me. Can somebody argue that he’s, you know, performing and turning it up a notch for the cameras? Yeah, you could say that, but I didn’t feel that, and I don’t know that.

It’s a good question, and I’ve actually thought about this quite a bit going into the project, throughout the project, now that we’ve sort of wrapped it up. But the answer is, I don’t know how genuine anyone is at any given moment. Certainly when you add cameras, and [WWE Superstars are] excellent performers, and I’ll add this: it’s not really your question, but the interviews I got to do on this project— everybody kind of said, “You’re going to get good interviews, because these people are performers…” But it far-exceeded what I ever anticipated. I’ve done hundreds of interviews for NFL Films over the years, and I can tell you, the Michael Hayes interview is — it blows away — it’s my favorite interview I’ve ever done.

So that’s a longwinded way of saying, I don’t know, but my impression was we’re getting the authentic side of these people. Listen, there’s a lot of cameras around. They’re shooting — you know, WWE has different groups shooting — we’re shooting. There’s the network cameras for the broadcast. And [the wrestlers] would often say, “Am I supposed to be in character?” [And we were like], “No, this is NFL Films for the Netflix show.” And they go, “Got it.” And so a lot of them would ask and want to be sure, and that was another indicator to me that we’re seeing Phil Brooks or, you know, whatever their real names are in each case, but I think we got the most authentic side of a lot of these people.

Were all of your sit down interviews after WrestleMania (41)?

I don’t think I want to detail too much about that. Short answer is no. Frankly, I’d have to think about it. I don’t know the exact schedule, and I’m not sure that any of them were after [WrestleMania].

We see in your show that Triple H said Tiffany Stratton has to apologize to Charlotte Flair after cutting a harsh promo about her divorce from Andrade. We don’t see her apologizing, but they seem to have reconciled by WrestleMania. Did Tiffany apologize to Charlotte?

I don’t. I don’t know if that happened. It’s not something we captured if it did. And again, you know, that could have been a locker room [conversation], frankly, but the short answer is, I’m not sure.

A few wrestlers get really bloody over the course of the five episodes. Some definitely look like the hard way (a legitimate cut that happens when fighting), but did you ever get into conversation about blading (purposefully slicing one’s own skin mid-match with a razor blade)?

No, never did. It’s the kind of thing that I didn’t even know about. But, you know, again, Eric Powers, my [showrunner], sort of explained a lot of that to me. And like some of the verbiage they’ve used, I guess, historically. But no, it never came up. I’m trying to think of, what was it? K.O. and Cody’s (Royal Rumble) match?

And I’d hate to be an authority on that, but my memory is — or what I understand of that, that was authentic and real. I think there was enough evidence that we thought it was real, and so we didn’t feel the need to ask about it.

Why did Cena decline to answer your pretty basic question about the heel turn after it happened?

Yeah, the heel turn — it occurred — and he didn’t want to do any detailing, because the story isn’t over yet when the show comes out, right? That was sort of the way I took it, and he might have messaged it to us even off camera, was the story’s not over. So he didn’t want to dive too far into it?

Was he more protective of the business than others you interviewed? Like, CM Punk, for example?

Yes.

Did any wrestlers that you wanted decline to participate? How did you pick your roster?

I would say no. Once we started understanding where their (story) arcs were headed, we sent them what we thought would work well, and I don’t think anybody turned us down. It was up to WWE Talent Relations to help us get the time with the talent, but nobody said no. When we had this meeting back in October to sort of decide if we were gonna produce [the show], Hunter said, “There’s going to be some old heads that might not want to deal with you guys, and might even be turned off, and might even kind of push you away.”

And so I went in very unsure about how we would be received. And I was pleasantly, I think, surprised is the word, that everybody we worked with — from the top to the performers to the executives, to the crew on the ground, the day-to-day people — everybody was extremely warm and welcoming. Everybody we asked for ended up in the show.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.