Emily Bett Rickards On Playing Mildred Burke In Queen Of The Ring, Working With Toni Storm & Kamille

Emily Bett Rickards plays Mildred Burke in the upcoming wrestling biopic Queen Of The Ring, and she recently spoke about taking on the role and more. The film premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival recently and is screening at a number of festivals across the country through November. Rickards spoke with Wrestling Inc about her role in the film, training for the movie, working with AEW stars Toni Storm and Kamille, and more. You can see highlights from the discussion below:

On what attracted her to the role: “Well, I had got the script, arrived in my inbox and my team had said, ‘Give this a read. We think it’s interesting. The director would like to meet with you.’ I read the script written by Ash, our director, adapted from Jeff Leen’s book on Mildred’s life. And I had never heard of her, but the script was emotional and definitely had a throughline of a real story. The fact that she was a real person too, only piqued my interest more.

“So after speaking with Ash, the conversation was, ‘Have you had any wrestling experience?’ ‘No, not really.’ I did feel like I was physically capable of learning. I’ve always been quite athletic and I felt like I had the potential, so there was something in me that was clicking for that. But mostly, I just connected to her heart and who she was and the fact that she had this huge dream that seemed well, unattainable to not only her of the time, but women of the time, and how she against all odds went after that. So the rest is history.”

On not being familiar with wrestling before this: “I would say [my level of wrestling familiarity was] below zero. If it could be below zero, it would’ve been. I had never been to a wrestling match. I had never watched wrestling at all. To get welcomed into a world like this is an honor because, not only are you an immediate fan, you are an immediate fan that’s treated with respect and so much gift of education. People were coming to me to talk to me about their personal wrestling journeys, which really helped me build the character of Mildred. I had one friend in the wrestling world, Brady Malibu was his wrestling name, who was just so excited to teach me to do anything in that sense. It’s potentially a really a common characteristic of wrestlers, at least the wrestlers I’ve gotten to know, through OVW and all the women that you see us wrestling in this movie who are professional wrestlers like Toni Storm and Kailey [‘Kamille’ Farmer] at AEW.”

On gaining a new appreciation for wrestling: “Oh yeah. I mean, almost immediately. I think that’s what I was trying to say is that when you get welcomed into a world when you don’t know anything about it, you have to be an immediate fan of something like this. It’s storytelling, it’s physicality, it’s performance, it’s character-driven. I’m already in the business of character-driven stories and to see these personas come to life. People who have dreams, it’s always intriguing to hear about people’s dreams, and I think hearing about other people’s dreams always inspire our own, and wrestling is full of dreams.”

On researching Burke for the film: “Yeah, you want to do the character justice and you want to honor the character as well as honor the script and story that your collaborators and yourself have signed on to tell. So I think the honesty in which you want to portray this, in my case, woman, you want to come out with a real honest perspective. And then there’s a ton of research, luckily enough, on someone like Mildred. She was during the era when publication was apparent and when TV was starting to happen, she was just in the mix of that. She didn’t get too large into that, but the fact that that type of media was around her era made it a lot easier to find photographs of her and research.

“There was a book done on her by Jeff Leen, which the script is also based off of, and we definitely, Ash specifically, encourages everybody to read the book because there’s so much in there, so much more than our story could hold in the format of the timestamp of our movie. So yeah, you really have to do your best to honor the person and embody that spirit. I really hope that we did Mildred proud.”

On training for the role: “Yeah, so when I arrived in Louisville, we were trained at OVW in Louisville, which Al Snow and Dougie Basham headlined that for us. Our stunt coordinators, Heath and Jeff, as well as my stunt double Kelly, were there as big leaders as well in that. And then all the wrestlers at OVW too, who let me slam them incessantly for practice and who shared their stories with me about wrestling and who let me come to watch some of their shows and their matches. All of that was education that you can’t get without getting shared with, without people sharing it with you. I was really lucky to have that.

“So yeah, a lot of wrestling rehearsals, a lot of learning choreography, a lot of learning about the history of wrestling, why persona is so important, what persona means to certain people, how people choose their names, even what they wear, those kind of things are all creating this character, which creates the storyline of why we fall in love with wrestling. Getting welcomed into that world was so fun and it’s definitely started to turn it up all the way to a hundred percent when I arrived in Louisville.”

On working with Toni Storm and Kamille: “Well, I wrestled with Kailey a lot, Kamille a lot, and not only was she helpful, she’s guiding them. She’s a real leader. She is. I bow down. She is those wrestling scenes. When you get to see them in the film, there is no scene, there is no wrestling without her, she is really leading and guiding as well as Toni in our wrestling as well. I didn’t get to spend as much time with Toni, but once again, she is guiding that. They’re the pros. I’m the guest in those arenas, and I’m really grateful for their guidance.”