Acting Is Nothing New For WWE's David Otunga
By Spike Eskin
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – You might not expect a WWE superstar to find time for acting lessons during scattered off days within his rigorous schedule.
Then again, you wouldn't expect a WWE superstar to be a Havard educated lawyer who does pro-bono work in his free time.
This is David Otunga.
Otunga stars in The Call, starring Halle Berry, which hits theatres Friday, March 15th. It's Otunga's first movie, but he's not coming in cold.
"This is my first film, my first movie role, but I've been in acting classes for years. So it's something that I've been working toward and constantly preparing for," Otunga said.
So how does he find time to balance the WWE, being a lawyer, and acting classes?
"Man, it is tough. There just aren't enough hours in the day," he said. "Already with WWE our schedule is demanding, we get like two days off a week. And even still, the whole time I've been in WWE I made sure that I would attend acting classes once a week, on my day off. So I'd get home, see the family, and finish laundry, all different stuff I had to do, but I still make sure I had time to go to acting class. So it's just a matter of making sure you have your priorities in order, and time management is super important."
Otunga plays a police officer in The Call, who can be a "little-bit" over-zealous sometimes, but his heart is in the right place. Berry stars as a 911 operator who is working to find a kidnapped girl.
Otunga imagines a world where 911 operators everywhere look like Halle Berry.
"I've never really thought about that before. I wonder what the 911 operators look like. I mean, what if they were all super hot? You never know," Otunga said. "All we do is hear their voice. They don't always necessarily have sex line voices, but that isn't to say that they aren't necessarily attractive."
Even though Otunga graduated from Harvard law school, wrestles in the WWE, and is now an actor in a major motion picture, the toughest thing he's encountered is getting his trademark bow-tie to look right.
"The most difficult is learning how to tie a bow tie the right way. I'm very proud of that," Otunga said when he was asked what was the hardest to master. I personally spent a weekend watching YouTube videos to try and figure it out. "You know about [the YouTube videos]? I did, but for some reason I couldn't get it from that. And I kept getting it backwards and something was wrong. So ultimately I had to teach myself. And when I taught myself, I had it down. I'm quite proud of that, because I never wear clip-ons. [Clip-ons look]too perfect. That's the thing I try to tell people, is that a bow-tie should not be absolutely perfect."
David Otunga
Otunga's two most well-known props in the WWE are his bow-tie, and his ever-present travel coffee mug. It couldn't possibly always be coffee in there, could it?
"It's always actually coffee. And the funny thing is, people are always so surprised by that," he said. "They don't believe it. I'll be at an autograph signing, and people say 'hey, what's in there?' I'll show them, it's coffee. I love coffee. I don't understand, it's a coffee mug. I'm not hiding it."
The wrestling world lost one of its most accomplished, beloved managers last week, as William Moody, aka Paul Bearer, passed away.
"He was just so pleasant, I can see why everybody loved him so much, because I had just, great conversations with him. He's always got something nice to say, we would talk about stories from the old days. I definitely was sad to hear that, and he will definitely be missed," Otunga said.
