Jennifer Pepperman On Learning the Similarity Between Pro Wrestling And Soap Operas

Jennifer Pepperman recently talked about how she found a connection with wrestling through her work as a soap opera writer. The WWE creative team alumna and current AEW Vice President of Content Development spoke on AEW Unrestricted about not being a fan of wrestling at first until she realized the similarity between the industry and soaps.

“I realized that professional wrestling is like this magical, beautiful art form, and one of the things that I was first really taken by was that the audience is actually like a character,” Pepperman said (per Wrestling Inc). “So, after I’d been working for a couple of months, I had this sort of like ‘a-ha’ moment. ”

She continued, “I was like, you know, dramatically, it’s not that different than a soap opera, except in professional wrestling, you have a good guy and a bad guy in dramatic conflict, but that conflict is solved by fighting in a wrestling ring. Whereas in a narrative drama, it’s solved by, you know, someone gets shot, someone gets stabbed, people fall in love, people get divorced, someone’s cheating on someone … but the conflict [of wrestling] is solved by fighting in the ring.”

Pepperman joined AEW in February and has worked heavily on Mercedes Mone’s creative direction.