Bray Wyatt's father reveals how much creative influence he has on his character
Mike Rotunda, the former WWE producer and father of Bray Wyatt recently appeared on the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast, where he spoke about various topics such as his WWE release, among others.
Rotunda spoke about Bray Wyatt and his unique character work and what goes in behind the scenes. He felt that Bray Wyatt's character was out of the box and when he made the switch to 'The Fiend', he described it as watching a new show entirely (H/T PostWrestling.com):
“I thought the Bray Wyatt character was out of the box because I hadn’t seen anything like that and he pulled it off so well, you know? Then, I didn’t even know he was gonna start doing The Fiend stuff and all of a sudden, I was like a new fan watching it myself because I wasn’t aware that he was — even though you work for the same company there, you could go a month without being on the same show
Rotunda said that a key factor was the fact that Bray Wyatt got to do a lot of the character work on his own. While WWE's creative team had input, it was largely an individual concept. Rotunda continued, saying:
Some people, you can do stuff to enhance a character and make it even bigger. It’s like the character my oldest son does when he did Bray Wyatt. They kind of came up with that themselves and it was… developed the character more and more and then they went to doing The Fiend stuff and he was just — Windham, my older son is good on the mic. He can talk well and speak well and he has a creative mind
Rotunda praised Bo Dallas as well and said that both brothers are creative, not taking credit for it. He said that now, WWE has a much bigger creative team than they did when he was a superstar, but for Bray Wyatt, they were only roughly involved with the entire process.
Why does WWE give Bray Wyatt creative control?
Bray Wyatt is likely one of the few WWE superstars long with Daniel Bryan and Edge who have creative control. Perhaps it has to do with the trust with Vince McMahon has with Bray Wyatt and his overall ability to develop a new character.