Photo Credit: Erica Parise/Netflix

Awesome Kong On Facing Stereotypes In Wrestling, Her ‘Urban Mullet’ On GLOW, Getting Her Own Spotlight Episode

Awesome Kong recently spoke with The Ringer while promoting season two of GLOW on Netflix; you can read a few highlights below:

Awesome Kong on her character Tammé / Welfare Queen’s hair being very specific to the time period of the show, how she can’t just take it out: 

Yes, yes it is. I think it’s fantastic for the show, however. When I do roam around L.A., I find myself explaining it unnecessarily. If I go to a burger joint, I’m like, “My hair—it’s for a project I’m doing.” They don’t ask, but I just feel like I have to explain my hair everywhere I go.

No, no. They weave it in, so it’s in for the whole season. So yeah, I walked around L.A. like that, with this weird mullet. When it’s not curled, the way Tammé wears it, it looks like a straight-up urban mullet! [Laughs] I’ll go around town like, “I didn’t do this on purpose. This is not one of those internet challenges. I’m doing a project.”

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Awesome Kong talks about how she was given her ring name and how she made it her own after facing stereotypes that the GLOW girls do: 

For sure! Absolutely, for sure. When I first went to Japan, I didn’t get to choose my name, Amazing Kong. In fact, I was training in Santa Monica at the New Japan dojo and Shinsuke Nakamura, who’s now a WWE superstar, called me Kong. I didn’t know if he was just unaware of the connotation that Kong would have for a black person, because he was from Japan, but I got really upset. Then they had to explain to me that they’d recently had a press conference, and that the company that was bringing me over had named me Kong.

So I had to go home and really contemplate and really consider what I’d be getting myself into, and whether or not I should just ditch the job, even though it would be a great opportunity for me. I was at home, in Hollywood at the time, and an N.W.A song came on. I remember thinking, “Hey, N.W.A stands for what it stands for.” Since they can be N.W.A, I could be Kong, and I would make this name my own, and make anyone who sees it, hears it, and relates it to me understand that it’s about respect. And that I did. Anyone who sees Amazing or Awesome Kong respects that name first. I feel that that’s a goal that my people should always work towards, not a meaning of ridicule or put-down, but always respect. I owned it, and I own it today.

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Kong talks about getting her own spotlight episode in season two, when she learned about it: 

About two weeks before. It was a surprise to me, because a lot of us had heard, “Oh, they’re having a special episode that goes in a different direction from a traditional episode,” and most of us girls wouldn’t be in it. And I just assumed that I wouldn’t be in it. I had actually planned a trip to Hearst Castle and Santa Barbara. [Laughs] I was like, “I’ll have the week off! It’ll be fine!” And we got the script and I was like, “OK, well this is very interesting.”

It was, I tell you, a treat. A real treat. Just preparing for it, I could get extremely serious. I got an acting coach specifically for that episode, since there was a lot of drama and a lot of emotion in that episode. It was a treat all the way around, to learn more about Tammé and meet her son.

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