Brian Gewirtz has shed new light on the Cleopatra’s golden egg storyline from late 2021.
The former WWE head writer appeared on The Bill Simmons Podcast on Wednesday and said the original plans for the angle were “way worse.” However, he wouldn’t elaborate on what those plans were.
Gewirtz said:
We were doing Red Notice product integration in the pay-per-view. There was this magical golden angle that If you recall, it was a heavily reviled night of creative, everybody hated the angle as far as this golden egg that Austin Theory found and Sami Zayn ratted him out and everything else like that. The original creative for that, I won’t go into, but just trust me, it was much, much, much worse.
When I discussed it with Dwayne [Johnson], it was like, ‘Yeah, that’s gotta change.’
Gewirtz continued to say that Vince McMahon began to take notice of Sami Zayn’s ability as a performer during the filming of vignettes for the angle.
And then Vince and the team came up with this egg thing which most people watching it didn’t like it for whatever reason, that’s fine, but I was told that during those vignettes where Sami kind of stooged off Austin Theory and wanted him to be punished and then was put in a situation where – whatever the creative was – that was the turning point as far as Vince going, ‘Hey, this Sami is… I mean, I always liked him but…”
I think we should look at that egg angle now a little bit differently and perhaps give props to the golden, magical, $100 million egg because – listen, talent always rises to the top and Sami is amazing and would have risen to the top anyway – I just thought it was funny that it was those vignettes where Vince really took notice as far as Sami as a performer.
The Cleopatra’s golden egg storyline was a tie-in to The Rock’s Netflix movie, Red Notice. Austin Theory was eventually revealed to be the culprit behind the stolen egg. He stated that he was only trying to take a selfie with it but then all the security made him nervous and he ended up walking away with the egg in his possession. After Theory admitted to the crime, McMahon rewarded him with a WWE title match against Big E on the November 21, 2021 edition of Raw. Theory lost the match after being distracted by Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins.
