Jackie Redmond (@Jackie_Redmond) is a broadcaster and interviewer currently working with WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Washington, DC to discuss how a phone call from Michael Cole led to her joining WWE, the unique way she got into broadcasting, her dream job of reporting on the NHL, interviewing Triple H and The Rock after the wild WrestleMania 40 press conference, if she has any interest in getting in the ring, and more!
How long have you been broadcasting for?
“Since 2011. I know it’s crazy. It’s nuts. I feel like I’ve been doing it for like, five [years]. It doesn’t feel in the moment like I’ve been doing it as long as I have, although, until you start thinking about all the things that you’ve done, the successes, the failures, then you go, oh yeah, I guess it’s been that long.”
Your first appearance was in NXT, right?
“No, I never did NXT. Never did NXT. I did studio shows in Stanford starting in 2020, 2021. I did Raw Talk and Talking Smack. It’s been a lot of wrestling. I owe a lot to WWE because when I first started in broadcasting, I was cutting highlight packages. I was not on the air in a consistent capacity at all. One of the first opportunities I ever had to cut my teeth as a host was Aftermath. It was a wrestling show. I got a call and they said, Renee is leaving. Do you want to host the show? Do you watch wrestling? I said, Well, I watched it for like, four years as a kid. I had an obsessive phase. I haven’t been watching it, but I can absolutely get back into it. So that was my first ever real hosting gig.”
But your dream job was hockey?
“I always wanted to be on Hockey Night in Canada. That was my dream, and so that’s what I chased for a really, really long time. I’m so lucky that I now do that for a living. I work with Wayne Gretzky, which is so weird. The idea that even in my wildest dreams as a kid, right? Dreaming of being on Hockey Night in Canada, I was like, well, maybe one day I’ll work with Don Cherry. I never imagined a scenario where Wayne Gretzky would be on the panel in the studio talking to me out in the field. That was never something that I thought could be a real thing.”
And for those who don’t know, this is a really big deal:
“Hockey in Canada, I guess would be what you football is in America. That is the upper echelon of sports in Canada. And that’s what I always wanted to do. So that’s what I chased for a long time, and then I got it, and I was happy, and I was doing a two-hour studio show every single day, covering hockey, covering the entire league. I still to this day, owe everything to that show, and WWE has been a really great bonus.”
The way you got into broadcasting was pretty crazy too:
“I was on a reality show. I won a contest, because a lot of people told me when I first started out, you’re just a contest winner and I was like, I’ll show you. I will show you that I’m not just a contest winner. Yeah, the show was called Gillette DRAFTED: The Search for Canada’s Next Sportscaster, and so it was very like American Idol, but for broadcasting, that’s what I did. I was on season three, and there was different iterations of the show. The show I was on, there was a top 10, we had a challenge every week. There was a bottom three, and then someone would get eliminated. The whole tagline of the show was, ‘You will not be drafted.’ And at the end, one person gets drafted, they get a one-year contract to work at the Score Television Network, which doesn’t exist anymore, but it got bought by Sportsnet.”
Wasn’t Renee Paquette one of the judges?
“Yes, Renee Paquette. WWE knows her as Renee Young. She was a judge, and to this day, I always say Renee is literally one of the reasons that I got my start in sports. She’s the best, and she’s an amazing human, and we’re still friends to this day, she has been so, so, so great to me. There aren’t words, really, to describe how great she’s been to me. So I love her.”
Did you reach out to her when you got into wrestling?
“You know what’s funny? So Renee and I, for a long time, sort of had these parallel careers, a little bit. So when she left The Score, I started hosting Aftermath, which she had hosted before me. Actually, when she came to WWE, I wrote one of her reference letters to get her Green Card or visa, or one of those things. I remember her reaching out and asking me to write a letter. So I wrote her a letter of recommendation as a former co-worker of hers.”
You also knew CM Punk:
“I crossed paths with CM Punk prior to joining WWE because he’s such a hockey fan. So I knew him through hockey. So when he came back, I instantly DM’d him. I was leaving the venue, and I was like, ‘You little sh*t! I didn’t know you were coming back.’ This is crazy, and I was still pretty new at that time. So for me, I was like, Oh my gosh. It’s an intimidating world. Everyone’s so nice and welcoming, but it’s a big world with big personalities. Everyone’s focused on what they have going on. So when I first started, I was very much in my shell, I was shy. So when Punk came back, I was like, Oh, my God, a friendly face. I know this person, which is so crazy because his reputation prior to coming back, it just amazes me some of the things that people say about him, because for me, he’s always just been an absolute pleasure, so nice, so professional, just awesome.”
I feel like you have one of the toughest travel schedules in WWE:
“I like to think I’m on the podium at least. I’m sure there are a couple of people that might be able to compete with me, but I do customs every week, and I get direct flights maybe once every three months.”
Did you realize you had a Canadian accent when you started working for WWE?
“I realized it before, because I worked at NHL Network in New Jersey. So NHL Network, for people who don’t know, 24-hour hockey network airing only in the US, which is weird, because hockey is so popular in Canada. It has to do something with SportsNet’s rights deal with the NHL. Anyways, they boxed out NHL Network. So NHL Network and MLB Network are in the same place, and they’re run by the same people. So in the offseason, I before I got tapped on the shoulder to come join WWE. I would cover baseball, and I would do a show called Quick Pitch, which was all highlights. On that show, you have to say the word out a lot. So my Twitter, every time I hosted that show, would just be full of people being like, ‘Ah, the Canadian is hosting the baseball highlight show because I love the way you say out, or I hate the way you say out.’ But when I go home, my friends and family all say I sound American now. So there’s certain words I guess that I say that now sound American. And now that I’ve been living in Nova Scotia for six years, there are certain words people say I sound like I’m East Coast.”
So how did WWE bring you in for this job originally?
“So I was in Montreal covering the Stanley Cup final between Montreal and Tampa. I mean, this business is funny, right? Because years prior to this, because that would have been 2021. Around 2016 2017 again, Renee Paquette calls me and is like, ‘Hey, WWE might be interested in you. What do you think? I told them I’d call you first just to see kind of what you think. And she’s been such a great person to me. I know we talked about her earlier, but whenever I’ve reached out to her for any type of advice, she’s always been there, even as the years have passed. So she had called me and told me that my name had been brought up, and asked me what I thought. I said, ‘Well, what is the gig?’ And I was still in Toronto at this time, and just like, it would be hosting. She goes, ‘I see everything you’re doing in Canada right now with misplays of the month, and you’re hosting our equivalent to SportsCenter on the weekends. You’re doing all this great stuff. I feel like they might put you in NXT, you might be in the middle of nowhere.’ Experience outside of WWE isn’t the same as experience inside of WWE. And she goes, ‘So I don’t know if you’d be into it.’ So I said, ‘You know what? Let me think about it.’ And at the same time, I got an opportunity at NHL Network, and so I ended up not doing the WWE thing, and it never went further than a convo with Renee on the phone. It was very much like early stages, like, ‘Hey, your name was mentioned by somebody.’ So I end up taking the hockey show. My dream job, right? I’m covering hockey two hours a day, live television. Best thing for me to ever happen as a broadcaster, because when you’re live for two hours straight, oh, man, you make some mistakes, but you learn how to kind of roll with the punches. So years go by and I’m covering the final in Montreal, and I am not even joking, I get a phone call. I don’t know the number. I pick it up and it’s Michael Cole and he’s like, ‘Hey, I know your agent. I got your contact info from your agent. We are looking for someone to host our post-shows, our Raw Talk and our Talking Smack, and we’re kind of changing them a little bit. We want them to be a little bit more like a real sports post-show where you come into a studio, you talk about what happened. Maybe you go back to the venue, there’s an interview, yada yada yada.’ So I literally get a cold call from Michael Cole, which is so weird. I’m in Montreal, and I’m like, I can’t wait to text my sister after this and be like, Michael Cole just called me. How weird is that? I guess my agent was supposed to give me a heads up, but didn’t get me the heads up in time that the call was coming. So I had been on their radar, and yeah, he called me, and I said, ‘Do I have to stop doing this hockey show that I’m doing?’ And he said, ‘Well, where’s the hockey show?’ And I said, it’s in New Jersey. He said, ‘Well, Connecticut’s 90-minute drive. It’s only twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. You do both. It’s fine with us if it’s fine with you.’ So I did the audition, and he called me pretty much after the audition, and said, ‘You got it, if you want it, it’s yours.’ Those were crazy days, because our show was four to six Eastern time. So on Monday, I’d be on the air four to six live, and then I would leave from NHL network and drive right to Connecticut, get there basically, with the traffic and stuff right on time for Monday Night Raw to start, watch the show and then go live again.”
What was the audition like? Did you have to do a fake interview?
“No, we didn’t do a pretend interview. It was with Matt Camp, who was with the company at the time. I think they gave us an old show of Raw a couple of weeks prior. And obviously watched that show before I went in, and we just had to go in and do basically that show, minus the interviews. So honestly it felt more like a chemistry test as opposed to like a traditional audition. So we just talked about what happened on Raw and I threw to break and did those types of things and that was that. I’ve never been a big teleprompter girl, so even if they wanted me to, I would be like, unless it’s like a sponsor read, I don’t want it.”
You make it so authentic:
“Okay, well, thank you, because that’s like the best compliment you could give me. Honestly, it’s funny because when I first started, I felt like I did not do a good job of that at all. I think I got very in my head about saying exactly what I was supposed to say, and not screwing it up. But I think over time, one of the things I love about what we’re doing with WWE right now is we are trying to be more authentic, and we are trying to be more real about what we’re doing. WWE has really been great for me in terms of being like, Hey, you don’t need to follow a script. If we talk beforehand that, like, this is the question that we need you to ask. However you get there is fine with us, if you do it within the allotted time. And so that’s been really helpful for me, that I kind of have that support where it’s like, hey, just do it how you would do it in hockey. So this is the angle, this is what we’re trying to push, but you don’t have to ask it in the way that it’s written.”
Is there a switch you flip to go from hockey to WWE?
“I don’t know if there’s a switch that I flip, but it’s definitely different. Because with hockey, and this is a credit to TNT and some of the other people that I’ve worked for, I am sort of able to push in the directions that I want to push, and so I have a little bit more freedom in terms of what I want to ask or what I want to report on, and those sorts of things. But with wrestling, I get to have more fun. I get to sort of show a little bit more personality when the opportunity is there, especially on something like the countdown show or the post-show and some of the long-form interviews that we do. I don’t know if there’s a switch, but it’s different. I do think it’s a different hat, for sure.”
What does a typical day look like for you?
“Oh my gosh, coffee first. I usually like to do a lap just to see, like, who’s kicking around. So I try to shoot the sh*t with some people in the morning. Then I go to hair and makeup. That’s the first stop, and then usually I’ll know what the plan for the show is the night before, I’ll have an idea of what’s going on, and then it’s just about prepping for either a pre-taped backstage segment or a live [segment]. PLE days are really different because we’ve got a two-hour live show. So that is like a whole other different type of prep. But I’m always trying to talk to Superstars and talk to people that aren’t Superstars, that cover the product just about what’s going on and where we think things are going, and what are we clinging to as fans, what are we interested in? And how can I work that into a report that I’m doing or a question that I’m asking? Because I don’t want to ask, ‘How do you feel?’ If I’m going to ask that, I want to at least before I say, ‘How do you feel?’ Give some sort of context or something that either the Superstar, it either triggers the Superstar or it triggers the audience, one of those two things. So for me, a question can never just be a question. You need to give a reason for the question, or you need to have the lead-up to the question be something that evokes an emotion in someone. It doesn’t have to be the person you’re interviewing. Maybe it’s the audience. But I’m always trying to come up with something, because if I just ask, and there’s clips of me just asking, ‘How do you feel?’ Or, ‘What’s next for you? But just know inside, I’m dying that I’m asking it that way, like I hate when I ask questions like that.”
You were interviewing Triple H at the WrestleMania 40 press conference, then The Rock interrupted:
“The jaw drop, the most natural crazy jaw drop of my entire life. The crazy thing about that situation was I didn’t even know I was interviewing Triple H until eight minutes before that. So we’re getting close to the end of this presser, and a producer comes up to me and is like, ‘Hey, we weren’t planning for this, but some sh*t is about to go down, and I think we need to hear from Hunter after this. We need him to give us something to kind of put a cap on everything that’s going on.’ So okay, that’s no problem. ‘So just pay attention. As soon as it’s done, he’s gonna come out of Gorilla, and he knows he’s gonna chat with you to get this instant live reaction from the craziness that just happened.’ So I find that out late, and I’m like, oh. I’m still only a year into this job, maybe. So for me, Hunter is still a very intimidating presence. I’ve met him, I’ve talked to him. He’s lovely, but we’re not buds. I don’t know him that well. I’m like, Oh man, I’m interviewing Hunter, can’t blow this, this has to be good. And then I interview him, and I like, I should know better at this point that basically 99% of the time when I’m interviewing someone, it will be interrupted, that’s pretty much a staple of what I do. But I had no idea that Dwayne The Rock mother f*cking Johnson was gonna come out, yell at Hunter and drop F bombs all on live television. People do not believe me to this day, that I did not know The Rock was gonna do that. I did not know, hand to God did not know that that was gonna happen. And so when it did, that was a very real reaction from me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I felt like I was teleported back to being 10 years old, it’s the Attitude Era and The Rock and Triple H are yelling at each other. What is going on? It was a very surreal, surreal moment for me. I don’t say that a lot, like that was one where I was like is this my life right now?”
Do you think you’ll do anything in the ring?
“I mean, I don’t have any desire to be in a match or anything like that.”
If this was 20 years ago, you’d probably be in a storyline:
“I do wish that superstars yelled at me more. I’m not gonna lie, that’s not really a thing that we do anymore, but I want them in my face. I want them to be mean to me. I actually really want that, please be a dick, be a jerk to me. But it’s a different time, maybe one day. No, I don’t want to be in the ring, but I wouldn’t be opposed to slapping someone or taking a bump.”
What is Jackie Redmond grateful for?
“My family, I get to do this job where the possibilities are endless, and that I am getting a reminder to enjoy this whole thing.”
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