Lana Reveals How The Ravishing Russian Character Came Together

Lana recently returned to the ring and she got a big win over Macey Estrella at the NXT live event in Tampa, FL on Thursday night.

Although Lana has been working in the ring off and on at NXT live events over the past year or so, she spends most of her time working as Rusev’s wife/manager on Monday Night Raw.

Lana and Rusev are still and integral part of WWE Raw, but when they first arrived on the main roster they played up the whole Russian angle big time. It wasn’t all that long ago that fans were forced to listen to Lana talk about how great Vladimir Putin is week in and week out, but it seems that the “Ravishing Russian” character has been toned down a bit in recent years.

For fans watching at home it seemed like Rusev and Lana were constantly trying to channel the essence of “Rocky IV” and it seemed that way because that’s exactly what they were trying to do.

Lana recently spoke to Complex and she talked about the origins of the “Ravishing Russian” character and how it all came together. During the interview she revealed that Dusty Rhodes and Triple H played a big role in bringing the character to life, and it was Triple H who suggested that she watch “Rocky IV” for inspiration.

“Well, there was a lot of different factors. My first day in developmental, Dusty Rhodes was in charge of creative. I would come up with literally about 15 different ideas because I’m an actor, I’m a storyteller. I have a creative mind. So I come in and start speaking Russian on my first promo ever. This is my first week in NXT. Eva Marie was put on the show, Jojo was put on the show, and then me and Alexa were sent to developmental, which I’m thankful for because I learned so much from Dusty Rhodes and Triple H. I started speaking Russian, switched over to English, and then Dusty Rhodes was like, “Baby, I want you to work with Rusenov.” And I was like, “Who’s Rusenov? Who’s that?” And then I figured he was the Bulgarian. We just started doing different promos, especially comedy promos. But I would come in every single day and would have meetings with Dusty, pitching different characters like nine-page character scripts and elaborate storyboards, everything. Using different people, putting on scenes. When Adam Rose shot all of his vignettes, he made me his first AD/PA because he was just like, “Your mind is so creative.” But Triple H was the person. They were already in talks about bringing Rusev up. Triple H had seen a lot of our stuff, but it was more comedy stuff that we were doing, and he was like, “I want you to try to do something serious.” Triple H told me to watch Rocky IV. He told me to try different hair things. So I showed him, I was in Pitch Perfect. And I was trying all these different things, and he told me to try an accent. I showed him a picture of me in Pitch Perfect as a Barden Bella where we were all buttoned up with our hair in a bun. And he said, “That’s the look.” And so that’s where I started creating the suits and the buns. At first, he said I should just do Russian, and then I started playing around with a Russian accent because I had never really done much of that in English. But then in two weeks, like that, I was put on NXT TV. Three months later, we debuted at the Rumble.”