Nikki and Brie Bella talk Total Bellas' return and WWE Women's Tag Team titles
Nikki and Brie Bella are back for a fourth season of Total Bellas on E!.
The twins have gone through plenty of changes in their lives over the past year, with Nikki having split from long-term boyfriend John Cena and Brie adjusting to her new life as a mum to daughter Birdie.
But the Bella Twins are never far away from WWE and they could be tempted back into the ring soon to go after the Women’s Tag Titles that surely belong to them.
We spoke to Nikki and Brie about what fans can expect from season four of Total Bellas and being strong women both in and out the ring.
When you started Total Divas back in 2013 did you ever think you’d end up with your own show that’s now four seasons in?
Nikki: "We didn’t but what’s was crazy is that we always had dreams of having that.
"Even years before Total Divas came around Brie and I wanted our own show, and so to see where we’re at now it's like, 'Brie our vision boards are coming true, we should do more!’
"It’s always been a dream so the fact that it’s come true, it just makes you high off life. It’s awesome."
Fans have seen you both go through ups and downs on the show, do you ever regret being so open and honest about your personal life?
Nikki: "For me, after my breakup, I definitely had a lot of moments where I regretted a lot like, ‘Oh I brought my ex on to the show too much, I showcased our love life too much.'
"But then I really took a month of just dissecting everything in my life and what makes me happy, and what made people happy and what I realised is, people loved our love. We had such an amazing love and it made me feel like, 'You know what, I don’t regret that'.
"Unfortunately sometimes with love there’s heartache, that’s just how love works, and what I realised is, you can't fear that and if I start to fear that, what am I showing all the people that are tuning in that I love to inspire and empower?
"So it really helped me grow. It’s almost like my own therapy with becoming stronger, and realising you can overcome this and it doesn’t mean that it’s something you regret, it’s just a part of life.
"What I love about being a reality star is the people that I get to really touch emotionally out there in TV land and how it makes them stronger and helps them with the decisions they make in life. So I had those moments and now I’ve overcome them and I’m just so proud it and knowing that I’m human as well and this is just life."
What have been some of your favourite moments of the show this season that fans will be excited to see?
Brie: "Fans are really going to be excited to see Nikki on dates especially with Peter from the Bachelorette.
"It was tough for me to watch because she’s so uncomfortable and it’s just so out of her element. You can just see how nervous she is. But it’s great cause we all get nervous when we’re dating.
"I think too, everyone saw our story going into Evolution on WWE television, but the great thing about the reality show is that we show you backstage, the way our storylines get built, us talking with producers, all the stuff that goes into what they see in the ring. I find that fascinating.
"For myself there were some mistakes that happened on live television in the ring and you’ll see how I was affected backstage and just what it did to me and where I was really like, I failed and I have two options, I can quit and go home or I could pick myself up and just fight it, go out and be stronger.
"So there’s a lot of emotions running high backstage throughout Evolution and you’re going to get to see all that, cause when we go out there we put a smile on our face and act like nothing affects you.
"But my sister was affected because, her and her ex, that was her happy place and that was her first time back since then and for me, being away from Birdie and just not being in the ring shape I thought I was in."
Brie, with the unfair treatment you got for what happened in the ring last year, (fellow WWE Superstar Liv Morgan suffered a concussion during their match on Raw in September) was it important for you to have this outlet to tell your side of the story?
Brie: "Yes, it definitely is, because first off it’s crazy how I’ve been wrestling for 12 years and one of my major mistakes in the ring I get judged so harshly on.
"We’re not perfect, no one's perfect, you know how many people have been injured in the ring? But for some reason I was like showcased in such a way of like, this evil person, and 'look what she’s done' and I got bullied really bad.
"I wanted to run into a cave and you’ll see. I don’t think people have ever seen me break down as bad as they will during the whole Liv situation.
"I went into deep depression. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to go back to work. All the horrible things people were saying about me, I felt a thousand times worse than the things they thought of me and I really had to sit down and think to myself, ‘Brie, you’re a mother’ and if Birdie was in this situation would you want her to feel this bad or would you want her to stand up to it and be like ‘Screw you guys?'
"I made a mistake and she’s not badly injured and you know what, this is our business, this is what we all signed up for.
"Everyone’s going to see backstage even how Liv and I were with each other. Out in the WWE ring, we have to play so much, bad guy, good guy, don’t talk to your competitors, but backstage you’ll see that we’re all really close and it affects us.
"We never want to go out there and hurt each other so when it happens it’s emotional. But people are going to hear my side of the story and my voice and how it’s about damn time that trolls stopped going on the internet and bullying everyone."
How important is it for you both as strong women to be so honest about the body issues you go through on the show?
Nikki: "I think it’s so important because I feel like right now in our world, we live in a very I call it ‘filtered life,’ because of social media and I feel like there’s this high expectation to look like what we see people look like in photos, and that's just not possible.
"Even me, it gets me down at times because I’m like, ‘How do I not look like this in photos?’ It makes me feel not photogenic and all these types of things.
"So I love showcasing that realness on Total Bellas and I think that’s what always made Brie and me so relatable to our audience, because we’re just really down-to-Earth girls.
"Like it’s just really hard for me to say in shape and Brie’s always been the smaller twin and it’s funny cause now so many people are saying, 'You guys are starting to look so alike.' I heard it a lot right after she had a baby and I’m like, ‘Thanks, okay.’
"So I like showing people the struggle because I think sometimes, you know I’m not the surgery type of person, but when I’m trying to run two companies, do a full-time comeback for the WWE, film a reality show, and then also just take care of like house life, and then I was also going through the bad breakup, it was hard to make it to the gym, or mentally it was just hard to get there, or I was eating something because I wasn’t feeling good about myself, or I was extremely tired and only getting three hours of sleep and my food was increasing and I was snacking.
"I just feel like it’s extremely important to showcase, especially when you’re in the spotlight, the realness side of that because that’s what the world has to go through."
With the WWE’s Women’s Revolution, do you think Total Divas deserves more credit for shining a greater light on the women’s division?
Brie: "100 per cent. I think sometimes wrestling fans will feel different, but the thing is, Total Divas introduced women’s wrestling to the world.
"There were so many people who were like, ‘Wow these women do this?’ Because it was like this underground thing, even though WWE is this global company and we’re worldwide famous, but it still feels mom and pop-y.
"I think Total Divas really not only put women on the map, but it showcased how hard it was to be in-ring and out of the ring and balance being a wife, a girlfriend, and someone just trying to figure out their lives and I think people really connected to that and I think people thought, ‘Wow these women work just as hard as the men, but when I tune into WWE television I’m watching them do two-minute matches or a five-minute match'.
"I think people weren’t understanding, because they were like ‘but we see them on Total Divas working their asses off’. So I really think Total Divas started that fire and I think it really peaked a lot of people’s interest and it got them so connected to these women in WWE that they wanted to fight for us. So I give a lot of credit to Total Divas."
What do you think about the idea some fans have of changing the name of the show from Total Divas now that the term Diva isn’t used by WWE anymore?
Brie: "My sister and I we were were like, ‘do we switch it to Total Superstars? Do we change it to like, Women of Wrestling?’
"But I think in the end, what it is, when you look at the business side of things, it’s branding. Total Divas branded this name and I think, yeah it could work, but at the same time it’s a brand we built.
"We were never ashamed to be Divas. We actually feel like as women we changed what people though Divas were.
"People thought the perception of Divas was someone who was high maintenance, but we started making you believe that a Diva was a woman wrestler who will kick your ass.
"So we were never ashamed of it, it just isn’t on brand with what the women are doing today, but I dunno, I’m torn, I’m always like, ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it’. It just doesn’t match what the WWE television is doing.
Was there a lot of sadness for you when WWE decided to retire the Divas’ title (Nikki is the longest-reigning Divas’ champion in WWE history)?
Nikki: "There definitely was. There was a part of me that's like, ‘Well yeah, no one’s going to be beating my 301-day reign'. But there also was a sadness, just because I’ve seen what had gone into that championship, the women that had held it, the hard work behind it, the love, the pride, the honour.
"So it was tough for me to see it retired and just retired in such a way where it felt like a bad name. That championship, strong women have held that and little girls still show up to our shows with the Divas Championship, there was something very special about it.
"So when it got retired I was sad, but I thought, ‘well I’m going to be in the history books forever’".
Will we see The Bella Twins going after the new WWE Women’s Tag Team titles in the future?
Brie: "First let me say that those titles would look best on The Bella Twins because we are truly the longest tag team in the Women’s Division."
Nikki: "We didn’t create a tag team just for tag championships. We’ve been a built-in tag team, who deserve tag championships."
Brie: "So you might not see us anytime soon, but you will see us down the road at some point eyeing those tag titles.
"It's just hard to live in a world where we’re the Bella Twins and there are Women’s Tag tiles out there. We will cross paths."
Catch the new season of Total Bellas Thursdays at 9pm on E!
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