Out of sight, out of (her) mind

Out of sight, out of (her) mind
by Mike Fazioli

Just because fans didn't get to see Trish Stratus on RAW for three weeks doesn't mean she was sitting around the house idle. Far from it, in fact.

"I had four photo shoots, a bunch of interviews, I did 'MADtv' and the commercial for Backlash, which is going to be amazing," Trish said. "It was all great, but I've been really busy."

The "MADtv" shoot, which is scheduled to air this Saturday night (11/10 CT on FOX), was a special treat for Trish, who is a huge fan of the show. She did not host the show, which has a new format that does not include celebrity hosts, but appeared in one skit and so impressed the producers that they've already slated her for a return appearance next season.

"In my case, they did the sorority girls skit," she said. "Now, something people don't know about me is that I am a huge 'MADtv' fan. I can literally impersonate all their characters -- Stewart, Dot, all of them. When I heard I was going to be on, I thought, 'Oh my God, this is my chance to do all these characters!' The skit they sent me was the sorority sisters. They probably thought, 'Oh, she's a girl, let's give her this.' When I got there, we put a little more into it and changed what I could, and it turned into what it will be when audiences see it."

Trish said she landed the return shot on "MADtv" in part after the producers got to know her a little better and saw her do her impersonations of the characters from that show -- a case where being a big fan of the show paid off nicely.

Trish's first foray into TV comedy was something she said she's been wanting to do for a long time, and something which fits perfectly with her self-described quirky personality. It's also something she hopes will parlay into larger projects down the road, much like a certain other RAW Superstar who took a television comedy gig and turned it into bigger things.

"I want to use this like The Rock did with 'Saturday Night Live' to use it as a platform to show different things," she said. "I'm really looking forward to taking this and expanding on it. I love doing comedy."

Pretty much all of Trish's action-packed time away involved projects that will show fans sides of her that they have yet to see. She also did a story for Flare -- a Canadian publication which compares closest to Marie Claire in the U.S., and will soon be shooting the cover for that magazine.

She also did an interview and photo shoot with Maclean's -- the Canadian equivalent of Time Magazine -- and a cover and story for Ontario Golf Magazine.

"Ontario Golf approached me about doing their cover, and I said, 'OK, but I just want to let you know I've never been golfing before,'" she said. "I said, 'I play golf on Xbox and I mini-golf -- does that work for you?' And they loved it. One of the shots, they dressed me up in golf gear and shot me playing golf on the Xbox. I thought that was cool. And again, anytime we can reach out to a different audience, that's great."

Trish's Flare cover and story, in which a writer followed her around backstage during a RAW for a "Diva for the Day" piece, will appear in that magazine's July issue. Her Maclean's piece is a Q&A session, which is a standard department in that magazine -- a celebrity Q&A accompanied by a photo. She won't be on that cover, however. "It's probably someone like Saddam Hussein or (Canadian Prime Minister) Jean Chretien," she said, laughing.

"That was great, because again, it's reaching out to a different audience," she said. "It shows people that we're not just wrestlers. We go out there, we're successful at what we do and we bust our asses trying to be on top of the game. That's what you want to be in life, no matter what you do. You reach for the next challenge in everything in life, and ultimately that's what we do. The interviewer was a fan and someone who gets what we do, so that came across in the interview. It hit a lot of points, which should make it interesting."

"The photographer's name was Christopher Wall, and he shot me as just me," she added. "I'm so used to posing and trying to tell a story in a photo, and he said, 'I don't want you to do anything. I just want you to be you.' They literally said, 'Just stand there,' which threw me because I'm so used to posing. I have a tendency to want to pose. But he has shot Fergie (Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York), Sean Penn, Heather Graham and all these unique people. He shot Claudia Schiffer, who's a very glamorous model, and he shot her just being real, and it looked great."

WWE fans in the U.S. will probably have a far easier time seeing a new side of Trish in her WWE.com Babe of the Year photos, which were also shot during her absence from RAW.

Whereas most fans have only seen Trish in wrestling gear on TV, in bikinis in the Divas magazines or from her days as a fitness model, Trish chose a more hip, everyday look for these photos.

"You get a certain idea of my style based on (my ring gear), but the really hip and current looks don't translate well in ring gear," she said. "A funny example is when I came back in Toronto and did the run-in on Jazz I was wearing jeans and a baby tee, and I got a ton of e-mail from girls saying, 'Wow -- you dress so cool!' I'd never gotten that before. I think seeing someone in normal clothes like that lets you relate to them a little more. But I can't work matches in those clothes. So with Babe of the Year, we did some very current clothes, what kids are wearing today. So they're taking those styles and doing the site around that. The shots are so different. I can look at them and honestly say that I've never seen myself look like that before. I think it's going to be a really unique thing we've put together."

Credit: WWE.COM

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