swerved: an interview with jeff tremaine

Social media maven, Gorilla Flicks cameraman, and man about the nightly LA comedy scene Rick Kosick recently sat down with Tremaine's limited attention span to chat about Swerved, his latest production now rolling out on the WWE Network, and what it's like to be in charge of pranking extra-large humans.

Kosick: What are you doing?

Tremaine: Living my life in a kick-ass fashion.

Well, at least someone is.

That’s right.

So how did you get involved with Swerved and the WWE?

For years we’ve done different things with the WWE. I’ve done a thing with Wildboyz, we’ve done a couple of jackass bits, and it’s always been a really fun thing to do, getting behind the scenes of the WWE. But they approached us and wanted a sort of a prank show: Superstars messing with Superstars. I was interested, having the little view that I’ve had on the inside of their world, and it seemed like a fun place to play. So we did it. And here we are. We’re talking about it now. It’s shot. It’s in the can. We survived.

Was making Swerved different from anything else you’ve done before?

Yeah, this show is different than the others in that it’s almost like following the circus around. We had to hide in plain sight in their world, and their world is always on the road. They’re in a different arena every night, and they eat, work out, travel. Eat, work out, travel—that’s their life. There’s not that many places we can hit them, so it’s been an interesting process. The best place has been mostly hitting them in the arenas.

Have all the Superstars been fun to work with? Any favorites?

Most of the Superstars have been fun to work with … a few of them don’t like us, but overall I’d say it’s been a lot of fun. Most of the Superstars have a really good sense of humor. They have to have a good sense of humor in this world or you wouldn’t survive.

Do you think you’ll be able to win over the ones that don’t like us?

No. Certain people don’t like being shocked. Certain people don’t like having poo-poo shoved in their face. So I don’t know if we’ll win them over. The thing about this show is that these guys have such a busy life and we’re messing with them on their tiny little windows of free time. So it’s sort of an inherently mean show, messing with these guys when they just don’t have time to be messed with, because they have to get to the arena, do their thing, get out, and travel to the next one. But we’ve been really lucky, and we’ve pulled off some really funny stuff on a good variety of these guys.

Who was the easiest to prank?

Well, at first everyone was easy to prank, because no one knew what we were doing. But as word started spreading around it got harder and harder. I’d say Zach Ryder got it the worst, because he got shocked and then he got this whole long pregnant thing after he got shocked, so he got it twice. And I wouldn’t have guessed we’d get him that second time, but sure enough, we did. I wouldn’t say that any of them are super easy to get … some are more gullible than others, but it really helps when you have a Superstar as an accomplice. Some of them are really good at lying to their friends.

Who have been some of your favorite accomplices on the show?

Dolph Ziggler, Kofi Kingston, Xavier McDaniel, Paige, Heath Slater, The Miz, Hornswoggle … yeah, everyone that has wanted to play has been awesome to work with.

Speaking of Hornswoggle, does it feel like you’re cheating on your own --

Yeah, it feels like I’m cheating on my little guy Wee Man when I shoot with Hornswoggle. It feels very familiar and he punches you in the wiener just like Wee Man.

Were there any Superstars you were nervous to prank?

Yeah, there’s a couple big dudes … like when we locked Ryback out of the venue, I thought for sure shit was gonna happen, because he’s a huge dude. And we certainly made Titus O’Neill who’s a large man mad. Yeah, some of these dudes are extra-large human beings, full of muscles. And hate.

So has this been a pretty fun experience working with the WWE?

I’ve had a great time working with the WWE. But I doubt they’d say the same about me.