William Regal Recalls Adding More Nuance During WWE's Shift To HDTV

William Regal recalls the learning curve involved in WWE’s transition to the HD era.

Speaking on his podcast, Gentleman Villain, William Regal spoke about how he was involved in the first-ever HDTV test for WWE programming. Regal noted how he’d just been moved to WWE’s RAW brand and wanted to signify it with a character change.

“I got moved to RAW and started a different phase of my life, which was, I started to grow my hair. There was a lot of things were changing at that time. I was on the very first tryout for HDTV, which was at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. And it wasn’t shown on TV, but it was the first time they did HDTV. And as soon as I saw myself, I used to have the short blonde hair with gel in it. Well I looked bald because HDTV is a different world. So it just makes anybody with light hair and gel in it. So I thought the hair’s gotta start growing. It was then, I wanted to change character. It was also, another little note there, but that was the inklings of that. Later on, I was on the first HDTV live episode. I can’t remember if it was live or taped, I’m not sure if it was SmackDown or RAW. And Mr. McMahon pulled me to the side and he said, ‘Darren, can I talk to you?’ I said, ‘yes boss.’

Regal says Vince McMahon asked him to add a little more nuance to his work, which was more of a struggle than he’d anticipated.

“He said I want you to be the first one who changes everything as far as facial-wise. He said because this HDTV picks up everything in a completely different world to what we’re used to. You’re always the one known for pulling faces and big faces and big expressions. I want you to take it the other way, which is do it as little as possible and little nostril flares and little glances. [Because it] could be more nuanced. [HD] hides nothing. And he might have asked a couple of people, but he asked me early on in that day at the first taping, ‘I want you to do that. Tonight, go the exact opposite of what you’ve known and ever done before.’ So that also, I think this will go into another episode [of our podcast], getting towards, it took a while to get to grow my hair, to get the look, to get a change in look, there was a lot of things that went on. Two weeks later, once I started having to talk a lot, I was struggling because this really wasn’t working.”

Regal noted that he’d cut his mouth prior to moving to RAW, giving him another obstacle to overcome. Regal was working to not only figure out how to perfect his delivery that changed at his boss’s request, but also had to be careful because his lip needed time to heal. Regal went on to explain how he didn’t like giving away too many of his tricks, but noted that he ended up picking up a mannerism from an unnamed British comedian that he liked, which helped him transition into his new role.