Uhaa Nation (Apollo Crews) Was Against Nigerian Accent, Was Told 10 Minutes Prior To Promo Use The Accent
In 2021, after being in WWE for six years, Apollo Crews (Uhaa Nation) suddenly had a Nigerian accent.
Crews had just turned heel by attacking Big E, and had adopted a Nigerian prince gimmick, which was not his original plan.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Crews said the idea for his character stemmed from Black Panther and Killmonger, and that he did want to pay tribute to his roots, but what happened on television was not his original idea.
“I grew up in Africa, down in Kenya, for a good amount of my life, but I didn’t have a lot of Nigerian…my dad is traditional, but I didn’t know much about Nigeria growing up. The language wasn’t spoken to us. We had been there a few times, but it wasn’t something like, ‘You guys have to learn this culture.’ I thought it would be interesting for me to go back and understand and learn Nigerian culture and bring the fans along for the ride. I pitched the idea and apparently the first thing Vince said was, ‘Is he going to have an accent?’ That wasn’t something I was planning on doing. The idea that I had was to not portray it in this kind of way. I was strongly against it at first because it didn’t make sense to me. As a kid, I had a lot of Nigerian-American friends, so we would imitate our parents and do that accent a lot. My brother and sister would put on the accent to imitate my dad, but by no means did I think I would be doing it on TV in front of millions. I felt strongly about it; I went and spoke to Vince and pleaded my case against it. Obviously, I was talked into it. If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it 100%. I used a lot of what my dad was like growing up, and I was able to immerse myself in this character. Some people loved it, some people hated it, but people were talking about. Overnight, I became- I don’t know if it was a Prince or what it was- but I became this character with an accent and did a 360 on the character.
“The first promo, I was going to do my normal accent now; he wanted me to do one line with an accent. Ten minutes before the show started, they told me he wanted me to do the whole thing with the accent. I was like, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ Ten minutes before. That’s what a lot of people will never understand. The things that go on right before you go out the curtain. People don’t understand it unless they are in the situation. I’m not the only person that’s happened to, but it was ten minutes before.”
Crews would win the Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania 37, defeating Big E in a Nigerian Drum Fight.
Elsewhere during the interview, Crews discussed his WWE release. You can find his full comments here.
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