Cassie Lee (Peyton Royce) Feels It Was Her Fault The IIconics Split Up

The IIconics (Peyton Royce & Billie Kay) were one of the most charming acts in WWE before they were split in August 2020. 

Royce (Cassie Lee) & Kay (Jessie McKay) lost to The Riott Squad (Liv Morgan & Ruby Riott), forcing them to disband. While Royce struggled to gain her footing, Kay was able to carve out a role for herself on SmackDown by handing out her resume and eventually leading to a team with Carmella. 

Speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Lee recalled telling Vince McMahon that she wanted an opportunity, at some point, as a singles star. 

“I don’t know if I’ve actually told anyone this. I hope Jess isn’t upset with me saying this. I wanted to go singles. There were things that I wanted to tick off my bucket list as a singles competitor. I vocalized that to Jess in January of last year. I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t go and try to get us broken up or anything. This was in the PC era and Jess was out for a week and I had this random singles match, I don’t even remember who is was again, and Vince loved it. He said to me, ‘you’re so good. What are we doing?’ I said, ‘If it’s possible in the future plans, I’m not saying right now, but in the future, I would like to see what I can do on my own.’ I’m so comfortable with Jess, I feel like we can conquer the world together, but I wanted to see what I could do for myself. So many people were like, ‘It was so stupid for them to break you up. Why did they break you up? You were so good together.’ I was like, I feel like it’s my fault because I wanted to push myself and see what I was capable of. Then, I don’t know, that might have been the worst decision I ever made because nothing ever happened,” she said. 

Many believed that The IIconics were split so Lee could be moved into a more prominent singles role, but she was quickly put in a tag team with Lacey Evans. 

Wondering what may have gone wrong, Lee said, “I’d love to be a fly on the wall in one of the meetings. I don’t know if I did something wrong. I don’t know if that was the case or if they just decided to go in a different direction. I’m never going to know that, but I am curious.”

Lee was given a singles match against Asuka on the March 22 episode of Raw. She previously revealed that the bout only came together because of a COVID failure, not because of her impassioned promo on Raw Talk. 

She was released by WWE in April. 

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