Mr. McMahon Producer Explains Changes Made After Sex Trafficking Lawsuit Came To Light

Netflix's Mr. McMahon six-part saga was originally expected to end much differently.

By Haley Miller

In January of this year former WWE employee Janel Grant filed a lawsuit against Vince McMahon, former Chairman of the WWE. The lawsuit accuses McMahon of sexual abuse and misconduct as well as former head of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis. In 2022 initial allegations were brought to the table, though there was no named attached to the lawsuit at the time. During this, Netflix was in the midst of filming a documentary about McMahon, bringing fans into the life of the multi-billion dollar media juggernaut that he helped build. McMahon rarely opens up publicly, so many fans were interested in hearing his side of WWE's dark past. 

Only, when the lawsuit came to light, McMahon abandoned the rest of his scheduled interviews for the docuseries. The second half of the series focuses on Grant's lawsuit and the allegations waged against McMahon and the WWE, with commentary from several key reporters in the investigation. Grant's attorney Ann Callis would later release a statement about Grant's lack of involvement in the series, explaining that she reserves the right to share her own story. 

"While Janel didn't participate in the Netflix docuseries, we hope it shines a light on the abhorrent actions of McMahon, frequently on WWE property, and it portrays the realities of his abusive and exploitative behavior," Callis said. "Janel deserves the opportunity to tell her full story, not be part of someone else's." She also noted that Grant "has the right to tell her story in her own way at the right time."

Mr. McMahon producer Matt Maxson has revealed how the documentary changed from when it was initially announced in 2018 to the initial bombshell in 2022. "I got a call in June or July of 2021. I came onto a project that had been going on since 2018. It had, at that point, two acts already. Filming didn't really begin until 2021. I was getting instilled pretty early on. We were taking something that, at the time, really didn't have an ending," Maxson told Kevin Iole. "It wasn't necessarily the most compelling story. It was a guy who built this empire up and at that point looked like he was on cruise control. We had all these different endings we were workshopping like, 'Is AEW going to be the challenge for him?' 'Is this going to happen?' We had gotten pretty far into production, all of 2021 and early 2022, and I remember we were screening cuts. 

We had a first draft for the first five or six episodes, and I remember sitting down to watch it. As we're reviewing it, we're giving each other notes on things, that was when the first Wall Street Journal article came out. We had to take a backseat from there and rethink everything from the ground up. I have never been on a project that has lasted this long that has felt like it's taken so many acts. I think Bill Simmons said he remembers 14 cuts. I remember a lot more than that. It just felt like it went from something that felt static and stale and locked in time to where you're nervously refreshing Twitter going, 'Is something else going to come out that we don't know about?'" (h/t: Fightful).

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Ahead of the docuseries releasing on Netflix, McMahon shared a statement, calling it a "deceptive narrative."

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