LA Knight Reflects On Commercial Gigs, Landing A Role In Brooklyn 99

Before LA Knight became the megastar in WWE, he was doing small commercial spots on television. 

The commercials have resurfaced online thanks to Knight’s growing popularity in WWE. 

Speaking on WWE After The Bell, Knight said he didn’t remember doing a lot of them until they start popping up again, and then explained how it all started. 

“A lot of those commercials were when I lived in Cincinnati. The Aldi commercial, for instance, was one of the first things I ever did in acting business and it was in Cincinnati, Ohio. I was living there at the time, I had just tried to move to LA. I was there for about four months and everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. I had to retreat, went back to Ohio. I’m from Maryland, but I started wrestling in Ohio, and by that point my friends had scattered across the country so there was no point in going back to Maryland. I went back to Ohio where I had a wrestling base and some friends. When I got back there, I’m back to working a restaurant job, telephone sales job. I’m like, ‘God, I have to do anything,’ back when you had the yellow pages. I went through that and I was looking for talent agents. There happened to be a couple in the area. I called up a couple of different places. Finally, a guy picked up, I sent pictures over, ‘what are you doing later today?’ ‘Nothing’ ‘Can you come over and read a couple of lines?’ I came over, went and read the line, and they sent it in. I ended up getting a featured role in a regional casino commercial where I was a masseuse and I was doing the choppy hands on a lady. That was a quick $800 to do that,” he said. 

Knight continued, “A few months later, the Aldi thing happened. A lot of that stuff happening in Ohio, the Animal Planet thing was in Ohio. The Animal Planet thing didn’t pay a lot, but what it did pay, it got me across the country because I had then gone back to Maryland for a little bit and once that check cleared, I think I had $50 in my pocket, enough to get my gas to Dayton, Ohio where I picked up my check. I picked up my check for $800 or whatever it was and then drove to LA. Little did I know, my car was going to die 80 miles outside of LA in the middle of the California desert. It’s a long story that I won’t get into, but I ended up going back to Vegas and borrowed money and things happened and I got to LA, but I had no money. I slept on my friend’s floor for four months in LA. It was a crazy time. When I got there, I got the jewelry exchange thing and then it was dry for a long time. I didn’t get roles for a long time. LA is very competitive and it was tough to get stuff. I was in background roles. Shortly after I got released the first time, back to LA, that’s where I got the role in Brooklyn 99. They gave me a trailer and a name for my character. I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be a meaty role, my name is Mario, I’m getting married,’ then I just stood there. I don’t know why they named the character, they didn’t mention my name, I didn’t say anything.”

Knight appeared in season two, episode 17 of Brooklyn 99. 

“A lot of the little goofy things, some of the stuff was just for YouTube. That was a friend of mine and I, just an attempt to not go back to normal work. What if we start this YouTube channel and do comedy sketches. We got two or thing off the ground. He lived in Boston, I lived in LA, there was no way to practically get us together to get that stuff done. A lot of that was done for free and out of our own pocket on shoestring budgets trying to get stuff done. It went nowhere. Thankfully, different wrestling companies started offering me more money after my first run with WWE,” he said.

What’s LA Knight doing in an Aldi commercial —

“LET ME SHOP WITH YA

YEAAHHH” pic.twitter.com/70Pu8bNoq9

— Live, Laugh, Love Lando (@BlessedBobby_) July 12, 2023

LA Knight got the biggest victory of his WWE career when he won the Slim Jim Battle Royal at WWE Summer Slam. 

Fans can find Fightful’s coverage of WWE SummerSlam by clicking here. Check out the post-show podcast by clicking here. 

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