Karlee Perez On WWE’s Third Party Platform Policy, Whether WWE & AEW Wrestlers Should Be Part Of Screen Actors Guild

In a recent interview with The Wrestling Inc. Daily, former NXT and Lucha Underground star Karlee Perez (aka Maxine) discussed WWE’s new third party policy, whether wrestlers should be part of the Screen Actors Guild, and much more.

Karlee Perez on WWE’s new third party platform policy: “They pick and choose [when] they want to pursue certain things because then they get a piece of it, and that piece of it is large. So if you’re doing the work and you’re putting in the time and you’re doing the acting classes or you’re out there hustling for yourself, why should they get a piece of that? There has to be some kind of ground and understanding, and so many of the talent, I get it, they want to grow and expand as much as possible. And that makes total sense. They’re in front of, you know, millions of people already, and they can expand a brand. And of course, Dwayne [Johnson] is one of the largest we can think of with brand expanding from wrestling into Hollywood.

“So, why wouldn’t you want to do that? They look at him and that’s inspirational. If he can do it, well then, I can expand this brand, but now, WWE has that control on who gets to and who does and doesn’t win and why and where. They do it because they can. I don’t think they do it for any other reason, just the fact that they can do it, and you’re not going to say no. And the people who do say no like myself, that’s looked down upon. So the fact that you can go and expand in something else, they don’t want people knowing that because that’s scary, that’s nervous to them. So they don’t want the talent knowing that, ‘wow, people have left and went and did other things and expanded on it.’ That’s not the kind of image they want to push.”

On whether WWE and AEW wrestlers should be a part of the Screen Actors Guild: “That’s a good question because they should be SAG, but unfortunately, we’re in that weird place with the wrestling business. It’s not union, so while they’re doing all this work and performing, they’re not protected by a union. They’re not getting the pay. They’re not getting the insurance.They’re not getting the time and the coverage that they should be getting, that you get being SAG and union, and wrestling will never do that because that’s something that would cost a lot of money. That will cost a lot of money to protect the talent like that. Do I think they should? Absolutely. They absolutely should, but Vince has been getting away with that for quite a while now.”

On her experience in Lucha Underground: “I missed my friends, the family I grew up with in WWE, but eventually, we became a family at Lucha. The content was better. It was just better. Everything was better, and there’s a reason it was better. We had stars from all different walks of life, different parts of the world, from people that were known and people that weren’t known, and it showed that if you let people do what they’re good at and give them that freedom to expand and not try to control them, people work better when they’re happier. And I felt like that’s what was happening with Lucha. We weren’t walking on eggshells behind the scenes to work when we got there. Everyone was chill, you work better that way. And it turned out to be a small show that turned out to be a really cool impressive thing for the wrestling business, and I’m happy I was a part of it. It was a really fun experience.”