Steph De Lander Recalls Struggling To Connect With The Persia Pirotta Character In WWE

Steph De Lander reflects on her run in WWE.

Lander, who went under the ring name Persia Pirotta in the company, was released from WWE in April 2022 after only signing a deal in March 2021. 

Lander quickly found success on the independent scene after her release, as she became the manager for Matt Cardona only months later. 

In a new interview with POST Wrestling, Lander spoke briefly about her run in WWE, noting that she felt like she had to mute herself to avoid saying the wrong thing.

“Within WWE, there are a lot of confines of, you know, you can’t say certain things. You can’t do certain things. I was so concerned about not saying the wrong thing in an interview or on Twitter or in any way that could get me in trouble that I felt like I ended up muting myself a lot.”

Lander also stated that she didn’t know how to connect to the Persia Pirotta character, as she wasn’t writing her own promos at the time.

“I didn’t really know how to connect to Persia. When we were doing those promos, obviously I wasn’t writing any of my lines. Of course, that’s normal, but I didn’t have the experience to be able to take someone else’s verbiage and deliver it in a natural way. I had never done a day of acting in my life at that point.”

Lander went on to recall a time that Scotty 2 Hotty counseled her after a rough day at the Performance Center. Hotty was a coach for NXT at this time.

“He was like, ‘Steph, none of this shit matters. As long as your boss is happy and you’re happy, you need to stop worrying so much about everything else because wrestling is meant to be fun and it’s not going to be fun if you worry about all of that stuff.’”

Cardona and Lander recently competed at GCW Homecoming, where they made their entrance in a very ghoulish way. Fans can learn more by clicking here.

Fans can see results from both nights of GCW Homecoming by visiting Fightful’s results section.

Special thanks to POST Wrestling for the quote(s).