John Cena

New docuseries shows what really goes on behind the scenes at WWE

I was a childhood fan of WWE and Netflix have just added the series I always wanted to watch.

While it was still referred to as a federation, I grew up as the wrestling company entered its Attitude Era. I was all about the rivalry between The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin, Dudley Boyz smashing tables and Triple H’s feuds and that Hell in a Cell match.

However, it lost it’s hook in me. Getting older means understanding the soap opera nature of WWE but for some reason or another I lost interest and couldn’t enjoy it in the same way. I did however, still wonder just how the sauce was made. How did they do it?

It’s a common question to ask just how much of it is real. Now, a new docuseries now streaming on Netflix, WWE Unreal, finally gives me the behind the scenes glimpse I’ve craved. It’s almost enough to reignite the passion for the greatest in sports entertainment.

For the first time ever with Unreal, fans are invited to step into the WWE writer’s room and in areas outside the ring that dictates what goes on with your favourite Superstars. According to the synopsis, the drama can be just as intense offstage as it is under the spotlight.

The five-part series shows how WWE made the transition from traditional broadcasting, to its Netflix debut, leading up to this year’s Wrestlemania event.

When Netflix released the Mr McMahon documentary, it didn’t feel like we were being given the full picture of how the company is run. It felt like there were some corners the cameras were still not allowed to focus on. Although it really attempted to hammer home that it was a family business run by people who apparently cared most about the fans.

That last point seems more poignant than ever with Unreal. From Head of Content Paul Levesque, AKA Triple H, AKA Hunter to ‘face of the company’ Cody Rhodes, a soon to be retired John Cena and team of match producers, all who are experienced former wrestlers. Each one of them speak with so much passion about what they do.

Many of the current performers have wrestling in the blood. From Ric Flair’s daughter to Rikishi’s sons they all have no problem showing what being part of the industry means to them.

It’s tough to dismiss their jobs as just faking it. They are all aware they are putting on a show. They just want it to be one of the best shows you’ve ever seen.

This time around, unlike Mr McMahon, Unreal even allows some warts to show. That includes when their Superstars suffer severe injuries but are promised their comeback will be all the sweeter. There’s a debrief when a move goes wrong and plenty of bitter rivals hugging backstage.

There’s even a tense moment when two performers go off script and allow their verbal altercation to get a bit too personal. A message is quickly sent to their locker rooms that it will not be expected and they must keep their professionalism.

WWE Unreal plays a big risk in showing just how much shown during Raw, Smackdown and its pay-per-view events is manufactured. Yet it still dares viewers, in particular, the lapsed fans like myself, to dive right back in.

WWE Unreal is streaming on Netflix.

“Heads of State” is not the Cheech & Chong reunion film you’ve been waiting for, but a comic thriller co-starring John Cena and Idris Elba, premiering Wednesday on Prime Video. Previously joined in cultural history by the DC super antihero flick “The Suicide Squad,” the actors have remade their rivalrous characters there into an odd couple of national leaders here, dealing with conspiratorial skulduggery, bullets, bombs and the like.

Call me dim, but I wasn’t even half aware that Cena, whose muscles have muscles, maintains a long, successful career in professional wrestling — which is, of course, acting — alongside his more conventional show business pursuits; he’s ever game to mock himself and not afraid to look dumb, which ultimately makes him look smart, or to appear for all intents and purposes naked at the 2024 Oscars, presenting the award for costume design. (He was winning, too, in his schtick with Jimmy Kimmel.) Elba, whose career includes a lot of what might be called prestige genre, has such natural poise and gravity that one assumes he’s done all the Shakespeares and Shaws and Ibsens, but “The Wire” and “Luther” were more his thing. He was on many a wish list as the next James Bond, and while that’s apparently not going to happen, something of the sort gets a workout here.

Elba plays British Prime Minister Sam Clarke, described as “increasingly embattled” in his sixth year in office, who is about to meet Cena’s recently elected American president, Will Derringer, on the eve of a trip to Trieste, Italy, for a NATO conference. (Why Clarke is embattled is neither explained nor important.) Derringer resents Clarke, who can’t take him seriously, for having seemed to endorse his opponent by taking him out for fish and chips. (This is a recurring theme.) An international star in the Schwarzenegger/Stallone mold — “Water Cobra” is his franchise — one might call Derringer’s election ridiculous, but I live in a state that actually did elect Schwarzenegger as its governor, twice. Wet behind the ears (“He still hasn’t figured out the difference between a press conference and a press junket,” somebody says), Derringer thinks a lot himself, his airplane, his knowing Paul McCartney and his position. Beyond aspirational platitudes, he has no real politics, but as we first see him carrying his daughter on his shoulders, we know he’s really OK.

Directed by Ilya Naishuller (“Nobody”) and written by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Harrison Query, the movie begins with a scene set at the Tomatino Festival in, Buñol, Spain, in which great crowds of participants lob tomatoes at each other in a massive food fight — it’s a real thing — foreshadowing the blood that will soon be flowing through the town square, as a team of unidentified bad guys ambush the British and American agents who are tracking them. They’ve been set up, declares M16 agent Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), who is later reported “missing and presumed dead” — meaning, of course, that she is very much alive and will be seen again; indeed, we will see quite a lot of her.

Also starring is Priyanka Chopra Jonas as M16 agent Noel Bisset, who is tasked with protecting the two heads of state.

(Chiabella James / Prime Video)

Meanwhile, the prime minister and the president board Air Force One for Trieste. They talk movies: “I like actual cinema,” says Clarke, who claims to have never seen one of Derringer’s pictures. “I’m classically trained,” the movie star protests. “Did you know I once did a play with Edward Norton? But the universe keeps telling me I look cool with a gun in my hand — toy gun.”

Following attacks within and without the plane, the two parachute into Belarus and, for the remainder of the film, make their way here and there, trying to evade the private army of Russian arms dealer and sadistic creep Viktor Gradov (Paddy Considine) led by your typical tall blond female assassin (Katrina Durden). They’ll also meet Stephen Root as a computer guy and Jack Quaid as a comical American agent. Elsewhere, Vice President Elizabeth Kirk (Carla Gugino) takes charge. (“Bad?” is the note I wrote. I’ve seen my share of political thrillers.)

There will be hand-to-hand combat, missiles, machine-gun shoot-em-ups, more than a couple helicopters and a car chase through the streets of Trieste — a lovely seaside/hillside city I recommend if you’re thinking of Italy this summer. Must I tell you that antipathy will turn to appreciation as our heroes make common cause, get a little personal and, with the able Agent Bisset, become real-life action heroes? That they are middle-aged is not an issue, though there is a joke about the American movie star being less fit than the U.K. politician.

The logline portends a comedy, possibly a parody, even a satire. It’s definitely the first of these, if not especially subtle or sharp (Derringer stuck in a tree, hanging from a tangled parachute; Clarke setting off a smoke bomb in his own face — that did make me laugh), a little bit the second, and not at all the third, even though it sniffs around politics a bit. Above all, like many, most or practically all action films, it’s a fantasy in which many things happen that would not and could not ever, ever happen in the real world, because that’s not how people or physics behave. (It certainly doesn’t represent America in 2025.)

There is just as much character development or backstory as is necessary to make the players seem more or less human. Plot-wise there are a lot of twists, because the script superimposes a couple of familiar villainous agendas into a single narrative; it’s mildly diverting without being compelling, which, I would think, will ultimately work in its favor as hectic, lightly violent entertainment. Not even counting the orgy of anonymous death that has qualified as family entertainment for some time now — blame video games, I won’t argue — it’s a painless watch, and, in its cheery, fantastic absurdity, something of a respite from the messier, crazier, more unbelievable world awaiting you once the credits have rolled.