Richmond Hill Post: Trish Stratus
How this Richmond Hill wrestler went from body slams to comedy jams and reinvented herself as TV’s queen of stand-up
WHEN TRISH STRATUS retired from her illustrious wrestling career last September at the tender age of 30, she had big plans to have no plans at all.
After years on the road, several injuries and a record seven times as World Wrestling Entertainment Women’s Champion under her belt, the Richmond Hill–born superstar was ready for a change of pace and a more permanent homecoming.
“I was just going to be a retired person and play golf and bingo,” she says, laughing, over the phone from her Richmond Hill home where she’s preparing for an afternoon barbeque. “But that didn’t work out.”
Although she and her high school sweetheart, Ron Fisico, finally found time to say their wedding vows last September after 14 years together, it wasn’t long before Stratus was being scouted for other high-profile gigs.
Always rising to a challenge, she headed south last fall to star in Armed and Famous, a CBS reality show about a group of celebrities training to be reserve police officers in Muncie, Indiana.
Although the show was cancelled due to low ratings after only four of seven episodes aired this January, Stratus had already been approached about another project — this time one that would bring her closer to home.
Currently airing, Stratus’s latest foray into the world of TV entertainment, as host of the new CBC comedy talent search show Second City’s Next Comedy Legend, sees the former wrestler and fitness model focusing less on her physical prowess and more on her comedic talents.
Although she occasionally still uses her physique as a starting point when debriefing with contestants, it’s her sharp, sarcastic quips and selfdeprecating attitude that make her such a natural host.
“The reason I took this job was I thought, this is a cool chance to sort of show this side of me,” she explains.
As host, Stratus follows the three judges — Second City alumni Joe Flaherty and Elvira Kurt and the Toronto troupe’s director, Mick Napier — from coast to coast as they watch auditions by so-called “comedy hopefuls” and judge who gets to compete in Toronto to become a member of the famed comedy troupe.
Her own entrance into the entertainment business was much less deliberate. In fact, Stratus had more traditional plans in mind when she first graduated from Bayview Secondary School in 1994. “My goal was to go to med school,” she says.
So, she enrolled at York University, where she studied biology and kinesiology, and decided she wanted to pursue pediatrics. But all that changed when the York faculty went on a lengthy strike in 1997, and her frustrations were met with a new opportunity.
She was approached by the publisher of MuscleMag, a popular fitness magazine, to do some modelling, a line of work she’d never considered before. One photo shoot later and she was out of the world of textbooks and into the realm of glossy magazines. Within two years, Stratus had landed herself on 20 covers and also began appearing on TSN’s Off the Record as “the cool female guest who actually knows sports.”
That’s when the world’s biggest celebrity rumour mill, the Internet, inadvertently kick-started her wrestling career. In fact, if it weren’t for an untrue bit of gossip that started floating around online about how she’d signed a contract with WWE, she may never have actually been approached by the company at all.
“It created enough of a buzz that [WWE] headquarters decided to get a hold of me,” she says. Even her husband was thrilled. “Ron and I were getting a kick out of it because we were huge wrestling fans.”
Indeed, Stratus’s interest in wrestling and sports began far earlier. Growing up with a large extended family, she spent a lot of time hanging out with her many cousins, particularly two male cousins from her father’s Greek side of the family who lived in East York.
She remembers playing baseball in their backyard and doing her best to fit in with the boys. “I pretty much grew up as a big tomboy, which is probably why I’m into sports and everything,” she admits.
But now that Second City’s Next Comedy Legend has hit the airwaves, people are seeing a side of Stratus that’s less physical. She says it was a blast getting to work with some of her comedy heroes and that it helped her figure out more about her own style of comedy.
“What I found interesting was when I got to be backstage and these comedy hopefuls would come back [from auditioning] and I’d throw something at them, and if they threw it back at me that was the fun part. We’d start bantering, and this neat thing would happen,” she says.
“So, that’s when I found my Trish style. The producer, Morgan [Elliot], kept saying, ‘Do your Trish-isms, we love it.’”
Stratus acknowledges that the show helped her develop her own style, and performing in front of a crowd as a wrestler wasn’t much different.
“When you’re standing in the middle of the ring and there’s 20- thousand people and they [the writers] go, ‘Here’s your A and here’s your B. Just fill in with your whatever in between,’ that’s improv,” she says.
Stratus has been honing her improv skills for years now. She began her relationship with the folks at Second City after taking an improv class at the Toronto studio in 2004 during a brief hiatus from wrestling, to heal a broken thumb.
Impressed with her skills, they asked her to help them put on a show, and she’s been returning to participate in performances ever since.
Indeed, she’s been making the rounds in the TV sketch comedy world for some time now, having starred on Fox’s Mad TV and CBC’s The Royal Canadian Air Farce.
“She’s always been like that,” says long-time friend Janette Lynn, who has known Stratus since meeting through friends in high school at Bayview Secondary.
She remembers her friend being popular in high school but always having a sarcastic, easygoing attitude. Lynn was also close to Fisico, Stratus’s husband, before the two met. She says the couple’s common sense of humour played a big part in their closeness even back then.
“There was no doubt that they would end up together. They just get each other. They have the same sense of humour,” she says.
It was a strong enough bond to keep them together during the many years when she was on the road for 300 days or more. But proving to the public and fans that you’re still worth their attention after moving on to something different can be a bit tougher.
“I always look at it like ‘Oh, it’s neat they usually have a preconceived notion of me, which is fine, but then it’s just my job to knock it down and build a new one,’” she says. “I just take advantage of all these opportunities to show a different side of me.”
So far, it’s been working wonders.
“When I did the Second City show, front row there’s all my fans from wrestling. They follow me to all these things. Every venture I’ve done, they’ve come and supported me,” she says, proudly.
While her next project, opening a yoga studio in the nearby Vaughan Mills neighbourhood with Lynn, might have some of her fans suspecting her of mellowing out, yoga is something Stratus has been passionate about since she started suffering from a herniated disc years ago.
But Stratus isn’t afraid of revealing that some of her priorities have changed now that she’s back in Richmond Hill. She says she’s excited about hanging out with friends, “looking for that ideal piece of land where we can have tons of room for the [future] kiddies to run around,” and, of course, finally settling into life with her new hubby.
“Sometimes I look back and I don’t know how I did it,” Stratus says. “It’s autopilot. I just missed the ability to slow down and just stop and smell the roses and enjoy things around me.”
by matt reeder
source: postcitymagazines.com
WHEN TRISH STRATUS retired from her illustrious wrestling career last September at the tender age of 30, she had big plans to have no plans at all.
After years on the road, several injuries and a record seven times as World Wrestling Entertainment Women’s Champion under her belt, the Richmond Hill–born superstar was ready for a change of pace and a more permanent homecoming.
“I was just going to be a retired person and play golf and bingo,” she says, laughing, over the phone from her Richmond Hill home where she’s preparing for an afternoon barbeque. “But that didn’t work out.”
Although she and her high school sweetheart, Ron Fisico, finally found time to say their wedding vows last September after 14 years together, it wasn’t long before Stratus was being scouted for other high-profile gigs.
Always rising to a challenge, she headed south last fall to star in Armed and Famous, a CBS reality show about a group of celebrities training to be reserve police officers in Muncie, Indiana.
Although the show was cancelled due to low ratings after only four of seven episodes aired this January, Stratus had already been approached about another project — this time one that would bring her closer to home.
Currently airing, Stratus’s latest foray into the world of TV entertainment, as host of the new CBC comedy talent search show Second City’s Next Comedy Legend, sees the former wrestler and fitness model focusing less on her physical prowess and more on her comedic talents.
Although she occasionally still uses her physique as a starting point when debriefing with contestants, it’s her sharp, sarcastic quips and selfdeprecating attitude that make her such a natural host.
“The reason I took this job was I thought, this is a cool chance to sort of show this side of me,” she explains.
As host, Stratus follows the three judges — Second City alumni Joe Flaherty and Elvira Kurt and the Toronto troupe’s director, Mick Napier — from coast to coast as they watch auditions by so-called “comedy hopefuls” and judge who gets to compete in Toronto to become a member of the famed comedy troupe.
Her own entrance into the entertainment business was much less deliberate. In fact, Stratus had more traditional plans in mind when she first graduated from Bayview Secondary School in 1994. “My goal was to go to med school,” she says.
So, she enrolled at York University, where she studied biology and kinesiology, and decided she wanted to pursue pediatrics. But all that changed when the York faculty went on a lengthy strike in 1997, and her frustrations were met with a new opportunity.
She was approached by the publisher of MuscleMag, a popular fitness magazine, to do some modelling, a line of work she’d never considered before. One photo shoot later and she was out of the world of textbooks and into the realm of glossy magazines. Within two years, Stratus had landed herself on 20 covers and also began appearing on TSN’s Off the Record as “the cool female guest who actually knows sports.”
That’s when the world’s biggest celebrity rumour mill, the Internet, inadvertently kick-started her wrestling career. In fact, if it weren’t for an untrue bit of gossip that started floating around online about how she’d signed a contract with WWE, she may never have actually been approached by the company at all.
“It created enough of a buzz that [WWE] headquarters decided to get a hold of me,” she says. Even her husband was thrilled. “Ron and I were getting a kick out of it because we were huge wrestling fans.”
Indeed, Stratus’s interest in wrestling and sports began far earlier. Growing up with a large extended family, she spent a lot of time hanging out with her many cousins, particularly two male cousins from her father’s Greek side of the family who lived in East York.
She remembers playing baseball in their backyard and doing her best to fit in with the boys. “I pretty much grew up as a big tomboy, which is probably why I’m into sports and everything,” she admits.
But now that Second City’s Next Comedy Legend has hit the airwaves, people are seeing a side of Stratus that’s less physical. She says it was a blast getting to work with some of her comedy heroes and that it helped her figure out more about her own style of comedy.
“What I found interesting was when I got to be backstage and these comedy hopefuls would come back [from auditioning] and I’d throw something at them, and if they threw it back at me that was the fun part. We’d start bantering, and this neat thing would happen,” she says.
“So, that’s when I found my Trish style. The producer, Morgan [Elliot], kept saying, ‘Do your Trish-isms, we love it.’”
Stratus acknowledges that the show helped her develop her own style, and performing in front of a crowd as a wrestler wasn’t much different.
“When you’re standing in the middle of the ring and there’s 20- thousand people and they [the writers] go, ‘Here’s your A and here’s your B. Just fill in with your whatever in between,’ that’s improv,” she says.
Stratus has been honing her improv skills for years now. She began her relationship with the folks at Second City after taking an improv class at the Toronto studio in 2004 during a brief hiatus from wrestling, to heal a broken thumb.
Impressed with her skills, they asked her to help them put on a show, and she’s been returning to participate in performances ever since.
Indeed, she’s been making the rounds in the TV sketch comedy world for some time now, having starred on Fox’s Mad TV and CBC’s The Royal Canadian Air Farce.
“She’s always been like that,” says long-time friend Janette Lynn, who has known Stratus since meeting through friends in high school at Bayview Secondary.
She remembers her friend being popular in high school but always having a sarcastic, easygoing attitude. Lynn was also close to Fisico, Stratus’s husband, before the two met. She says the couple’s common sense of humour played a big part in their closeness even back then.
“There was no doubt that they would end up together. They just get each other. They have the same sense of humour,” she says.
It was a strong enough bond to keep them together during the many years when she was on the road for 300 days or more. But proving to the public and fans that you’re still worth their attention after moving on to something different can be a bit tougher.
“I always look at it like ‘Oh, it’s neat they usually have a preconceived notion of me, which is fine, but then it’s just my job to knock it down and build a new one,’” she says. “I just take advantage of all these opportunities to show a different side of me.”
So far, it’s been working wonders.
“When I did the Second City show, front row there’s all my fans from wrestling. They follow me to all these things. Every venture I’ve done, they’ve come and supported me,” she says, proudly.
While her next project, opening a yoga studio in the nearby Vaughan Mills neighbourhood with Lynn, might have some of her fans suspecting her of mellowing out, yoga is something Stratus has been passionate about since she started suffering from a herniated disc years ago.
But Stratus isn’t afraid of revealing that some of her priorities have changed now that she’s back in Richmond Hill. She says she’s excited about hanging out with friends, “looking for that ideal piece of land where we can have tons of room for the [future] kiddies to run around,” and, of course, finally settling into life with her new hubby.
“Sometimes I look back and I don’t know how I did it,” Stratus says. “It’s autopilot. I just missed the ability to slow down and just stop and smell the roses and enjoy things around me.”
by matt reeder
source: postcitymagazines.com
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