Kofi Kingston has never been short regarding charisma. That sentiment has been amplified ever since he joined Xavier Woods and Big E Langston in The New Day where their comedic and at times cartoonish antics are on display every week during WWE Raw.
When WWE teamed up with Scooby-Doo and the gang to help solve another mystery, Kingston was a natural fit for a role in the new film “Scooby-Doo! And WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon.”
While Kingston is no stranger to havoc in the squared circle, he was exploring uncharted territories and living a childhood dream by sharing the screen with America’s favorite cartoon dog.
Kingston took a moment to chat about the Scooby-Doo experience and new opportunities as well as reflect on being a father and his WWE career.
Working on Scooby-Doo
CraveOnline: What can you tell us about the plot of “Scooby-Doo! And WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon” and your character?
Kofi Kingston: First of all, I have to tell you how big a fan I am of Scooby-Doo. I grew up in the 1980s so Scooby-Doo was a staple of my childhood. To be co-starring with him is wild even though he’s a cartoon; it’s still real to me. I don’t want to give too much away but basically, Scooby-Doo teams up with some WWE Superstars including The Undertaker to race Inferno, who is creating all of this havoc and they want to beat the bad guy. My role in the movie is I am the play-by-play analyst and I’m calling the race as it happens. Things are exploding and people are crashing and I’m the guy who’s describing it so it was a cool experience just to be involved.
I watched the film and I noticed your character rides around on a hoverboard and your wardrobe consisted of wrestling tights, a blazer, a tie and no shirt.
You’ve heard of the term ‘business casual,’ I like to call that ‘casual business.’
What did your oldest son think about you being a part of Scooby-Doo?
We don’t really have them watch that much TV. Everything he knows he knows from me like Darth Vader, Stormtroopers and the Ninja Turtles. He knows it because I’ve told him and we’ll go in a toy aisle and I’ll point them out. This movie will be one that we watch together. We’re all going to sit down and watch it as a family. I’m excited to see how he reacts.
He’s now starting to put together that I’m a WWE Superstar. The other day he looks at me and I’m like ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘Daddy, are you Kofi Kingston?’ I was like ‘OMG, someone exposed my secret identity to my son.’ Every now and then he’ll call me ‘Kofi Kingston’ so he’s now putting it together that not only am I his dad but I’m also a WWE Superstar. He just turned 3-years old so it’s pretty cool.
What was the process of working on the film?
We had two or three different sessions. A couple of them were on the road so I had to go to a recording studio right before going to a show. They always keep us moving. That was about a year and a half ago and then later down the road, they had me do more voice work just to sync with the cartoon. It was interesting being involved in that whole process because in WWE we do live improv. You get one shot and if you mess up, that’s it. With this, we have a chance to perfect the lines and tones of what we say. You would think that was less pressure but for me it wasn’t because I was out of my comfort zone but I think I did a good job.
Do you want to act and do voiceovers?
Absolutely! I do all types of voices and impressions while just messing around. When I got the opportunity to do this voiceover work, it was a great test and confirmed that I want to get into some voiceover work when this is all said and done.
Childhood favorites
We know you’re a Scooby-Doo fan but what other shows were you into growing up?
Thundercats. I was a huge fan of Thundercats especially because of Panthro with the nunchucks. Then I was a fan of Ninja Turtles because of Michelangelo and his nunchucks. Down the line I ended up buying my own nunchucks and realized I couldn’t do it. All of that stuff, man. I never thought I’d be the guy saying ‘You don’t know how things were back in the day’ but I look at cartoons now and it’s so different. It’s not what it used to be. But being in a cartoon with Scooby-Doo is awesome though, man. It’s like being on screen with a childhood hero.
Life in The New Day
You guys look like you’re always having fun. What has been your favorite thing you have got to do as The New Day?
We go out there and try to entertain ourselves. A lot of the stuff you see us doing is stuff that we have already done or would do in a car ride or backstage or just hanging out with each other and that’s why it comes off so natural.
We were in the ring the other day after we had become the longest reigning WWE Tag Team champions and we did a montage of all of the stuff that we did and we didn’t see the montage until we actually went out to the ring so we got to see a compilation of all of the stuff that we did. Mixing it up with The Rock and going toe-to-toe with him was amazing! Winning at SummerSlam and coming out singing “New York, New York” but having our own lyrics to it was crazy. Our time machine skit was so much fun. There was a time I told the crowd country music sucked and it was actually me and not my character saying it so that was awesome. We’ve done so much fun stuff and we forget about it. I guess if I had to put a stamp or a pentacle on what we have done so far it has to be the “Booty-O’s” cereal.
The origin of “Booty-O’s”
Do you make your kids eat “Booty-O’s?”
[Laughs] They gave us some advanced boxes of “Booty-O’s” and I had one and put it up in the cupboard and I went on the road and then my wife sent me a picture of my son. He had dumped out all of the “Booty-O’s” into his wrestling ring and he was so proud of himself. He had handfuls and handfuls of it. We try not to let him have too much sugar but that day he had half a box of “Booty-O’s.”
What was the origin of “Booty-O’s?”
We were thinking about a new shirt because the first one we had was just The New Day logo, which you wouldn’t know if you didn’t know what The New Day was. It was black shirt with a phoenix, which actually symbolized us rising from the ashes because we were at lower points in our careers and this whole New Day thing was going to be our resurgence. That shirt was kind of just thrust upon us. We had no input on it and I’m not sure how the sells did but the second shirt, we started picking up some steam and they came to us to come up with an idea.
Big E and me were sitting at breakfast one day and we were thinking about the new shirt. Somebody had came out with a Wheaties poster with our faces on it and we were like ‘Oh, that would be kind of cool. Maybe we could have our own cereal or something like that’ and we wee bouncing names back and forth and E just out of nowhere comes up with “Booty-O’s” and instantly I was like ‘That’s it. We can have cartoon pictures of our faces on it.’ We get to the building and I’m trying to tell [Xavier] Woods about it and I was like ‘Woods, man, we were sitting at the table and E suggested “Booty-O’s” and before I could even get it out, Woods just said ‘Oh yeah. “Booty-O’s: You can make it booty.” It’s just a testament that all three of us are on the same page. A few weeks later the merchandise team came out with an awesome design.
We were the No. 1 selling merchandise item at WrestleMania with the “Booty-O’s” shirt and the boxes and we didn’t even have cereal yet. It was just a box with a t-shirt in it but everyone wanted cereal and now we have “Booty-O’s” cereal available at FYE. It’s been a wild ride because a year before at WrestleMania, we were getting booed out of the building. Kudos to ourselves and I’ll toot our own horn because we got the crowd turned around and now everyone wants to be a part of The New Day.
The power of positivity
Kofi, what do you want the WWE Universe to know about you, the new Scooby-Doo film and the future?
Check out Scooby-Doo. It comes out on August 9th on DVD and Blu-Ray and digital video. It’s an awesome movie. Family friendly entertainment is really what WWE is all about so collaboration with Scooby-Doo goes hand-in-hand. It’s a nice fun movie for kids to watch and adults too especially for the ‘80s babies like myself who loved Scooby-Doo back in the day.
As far as The New Day is concerned, you know we’re all about that “P.O.P.” That’s the power of positivity so anybody out there who has a dream, believe in yourself and be positive it can come true because The New Day is a perfect example of it. No one believed in us in the beginning and now over a year later, we’re the longest reigning WWE Tag Team champions in the history of the company.
Joshua Caudill is a writer for CraveOnline, a hockey fanatic, a pro wrestling connoisseur and an expert on all things Patrick Swayze. You can follow him on Twitter @JoshuaCaudill85 or “like” CraveOnline Sports on Facebook.
Photos courtesy of WWE
SCOOBY-DOO AND THE GANG TEAM UP WITH THE SUPERSTARS OF WWE®
AS WARNER BROS. HOME ENTERTAINMENT AND WWE® STUDIOS RELEASE
SCOOBY-DOO! AND WWE: CURSE OF THE SPEED DEMON
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AUGUST 9, 2016
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