MACHINE MONDAYS: Feel the Heel!

An awesome Schmoedown fan asked me “How do you get into the mind of a heel? What are the difficulties of trying to portray someone who has an attitude that might differ from yours drastically?” Thank you Jay Burnz for the awesome question.

I got even more into the Schmoedown after seeing teams like The Missfits And Team Action. These were people I followed outside of the Schmoedown and knew them to be kind and wonderful folks, so to see them be heel on the Schmoedown was super inspiring. When Kristian extended the offer to compete, the first thing he asked was “can you play heel?” To which I responded “I can try,” (shoulder shrug emoji).

In real life I can be sassy as all hell, and if something gets to me I’m prone to talking a lot of crap. But for the most part I’m pretty quiet and reserved until I feel comfortable. So could I turn all that up a few hundred notches for the Schmoedown? With naturals like Jay Washington, Brianne Chandler and Andrew Ghai as my guides, I had to come up with a way to play heel that was as enjoyable to watch as them but customized to me. To play off those layers of attitude I had, but heightened.

I thought about my personality, how if I mess up or I’m wrong, I’ll suck it up and say I’m wrong. I’ll either get quiet out of frustration or embarrassment or I’ll get annoyed and talk a bunch of mess, but I’ll still admit I was wrong. So I thought, “how would a heel approach that?” Well, to me a heel thinks they’re perfect, without fault. So if “Heel me” did the “quiet thing” it would be coming from the fact that well, I’m essentially above all of this and it’s not worth my time to comment or even acknowledge it, so short answers, palm to the face, walkaways, etc. If I played with the “mess talk” side, it’s never my fault, if I talked big about winning and lost, stay cocky and confident. It’s everyone else’s doing. It’s sabotage and conspiracy. It’s porg voodoo magic. I don’t care that I lost, it’s only fueling me for next time.

It’s in body language as well. When I get intense about something, like a point I’m trying to argue, I find I do get animated. The neck starts going, hand gestures, the hip pops. So just turn all that up as well. Crossed arms, hand on hip. Don’t just walk to the wheel, strut to the wheel. Smirk don’t smile. Play it up when and where you can. In my first match with Bonnie, I knew she was known for not knowing “Point Break,” So for fun with my number choices in round 3 I chose numbers that were associated with “Point Break” trivia.

The difficulty comes in for me to be natural. If I get too much into my head about it, overthink what I’m going to say and how I’m saying it, I just feel silly and I can’t get there. If I just remember it’s heightening and twisting aspects of my actual self I can have more fun with it and loosen up. No, I don’t consider myself to be a mean person in real life, but I do have attitude at times so I just had to try to access that and then turn it way up.

Being a heel is a challenge. But it’s so much fun to tap into an alternate side of yourself. To be a little ridiculous and overly cocky. In trying to play confident I feel like I’ve actually become more confident and it’s only made me a more more well rounded competitor. Thanks again for the question Jay Burnz!

XOXO
– The Machine