Former WWE Writer Dave Schilling On His Reaction To Lawsuit Over Racist Storylines In WWE, Being Part of KofiMania Creative Team

Former WWE writer Dave Schilling recently shared his reaction to the lawsuit over allegations of racist storyline pitches in WWE. As reported, Britney Abrahams filed a lawsuit against WWE and Vince McMahon over what she feels were racist scripts and alleged that McMahon and other executives discriminate and retaliated against her after she spoke out against “offensively racist and stereotypical jargon.”

Schilling, who worked for WWE from February to April of 2019, spoke with Fightful’s Jeremy Lambert and Joel Pearl for an interview and was asked about the lawsuit. He also talked about his involvement on the Kofi Kingston “KofiMania” storyline that saw Kingston win the WWE Championship that year at WrestleMania. You can see highlights below:

On his reaction to the lawsuit: “Well, my thoughts were, I think probably similar to a lot of people who are people of color who work for WWE. Which is, I mean, not terribly surprising that someone would be upset about some of the things that they experienced at the company. It’s not the best place to work if you are a person of color, you’re a woman, you’re LGBTQ. Like, it’s just difficult, because there are a lot of people there who are older. Who are maybe not as sensitive to certain things. And at the end of the day, the person who makes the decisions is Vince McMahon. Even today, Vince has a lot of power and a lot of say-so in what goes on the air. And you know, Vince isn’t the world’s most sensitive person.”

On being involved in the KofiMania storyline: “Well I was there in 2019. And I was on SmackDown, on the home team on Smackdown. And the thing that we were the most concerned with, the thing that we were most involved with, ironically, was KofiMania. And that was a storyline that obviously traded on a lot of sort of attitudes about race, ideas about who should or shouldn’t be the champion.

“And I never felt like that storyline was disrespectful. I never felt like that storyline was treated in a way where Kofi came off as um you know, kind of a token champion. That was a really great storyline, I’m very proud of the small part that I had to play in that. And I think you know, we can debate how it turned out at the end when he lost to Brock Lesnar, which I found out about in April. We were talking about like, ‘The plan is first SmackDown on Fox, Brock is going to come in and he’s going to win the title and it’s going to be a quick match.’ And that’s exactly what happened after I left, that was that was the the way that it turned out. But the writers in the room with me were always incredibly aware of what we were doing, and why it was important.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Fightful Overbooked with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.