Dakota Kai on Why Her Heel Turn Was Scary, Discusses How Much She Misses the Fans

– Stuff recently interviewed NXT Superstar Dakota Kai. Below are some highlights:

On what her friends back home think of her now: “I find it hard to think of myself in that light. Even my friends from back home, it’s very, very strange to see their perspective of me. Just being like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy you do that. I remember going to high school with you’. I get a lot of those.”

Why her heel turn was scary for her: “It was scary because it’s something out of my comfort zone. But I really love challenges. I love being offered something different. And it was such a breath of fresh air from what I was doing in NXT, too. So I love it. I do still get a bit nervous in terms of whether or not I’m doing things right with my character, but I love it because it offers so many cool new challenges for me.”

Kai on how the pandemic has changed how they tape events: “It’s obviously such a change of pace to what we were doing before. To give you a blueprint of how we used to run events, we would film TV live every Wednesday. And then every second weekend we would travel out of state to do four live shows each night, four nights in a row. Obviously, we’re not doing that right now. So it’s very, very weird. So we’re filming two episodes every second Wednesday. And that’s pretty much all we’re doing.”

Dakota Kai on missing the fans at events: “It is so weird and it really makes you realize how much you miss that environment and how much the fans really are a part of everything we do. Because the fans and their reactions, they make the moments for us in the ring. I really miss having fans. But we still have our TV audience. We have hundreds of thousands of people watching us so, at the end of the day, they are our priority.”