INTERVIEW WITH JOANIE “CHYNNA” LAURER FOR SENSUAL PROFILES
by Abbie Bernstein
The following was posted on SensualProfiles.com in December 2005.

It’s been a year of intense changes for Joanie “Chynna” Laurer. The statuesque brunette performer/athlete has just completed filming a starring role as a male alien in a woman’s body in the science-fiction/comedy “Illegal Aliens.” Known for breaking barriers as a female wrestler and for her turn on the reality show “The Surreal Life,” Laurer sits on a friend’s couch, drinking tea, as she explains in her quiet voice how her years in various aspects of entertainment have finally led her back to her original goal: acting.

“Since my earliest memory,” Laurer says, “I have always been a performer. I did school plays, I was always dancing, singing. I have pictures in my head of the clothesline with a sheet over it [used as a stage curtain], doing my own little plays. I kept myself occupied – I was my own best audience,” she laughs. “I never really had a close family – I was closer with my grandparents – but I remember the times we had people over – ‘Show everybody how you dance’ or ‘Do the play for us’ or ‘Sing for us.’ So I was always kind of a performer, and it just always made me happy. It just wasn’t until my adult years when I put it in career format.”

Laurer says at first she had very different ideas about what she’d be doing professionally. “I studied Spanish and literature at college. I have an enormous love of foreign language, too, and had traveled the world twice over at a very young age. So my original ambitions were to be a spy or work for a government agency. Either that, or I wanted to be a flight attendant, a mermaid or the President.” At what age did she realize “mermaid” wasn’t a realistic option? “I still haven’t ruled it out!” Laurer jokes.

Dance was still part of the picture in college, though there were setbacks. “I studied ballet and we had modern dance. You had to put to dance a story, so I tried to do the story of my life, of being born – picture it, this modern dance pose, starting with the huddle in the womb, and then I branched out, and then I danced around the grave and then I put this big, epic falling into the grave, and I remember thinking this was going to be the best thing ever and working on it really hard, and it was going to be so profound and so cool, and I finally did that, and everybody just had hysteria at the end of the dance,” she laughs. “I loved it. Then I broke my arm, doing the flip [into the grave] and ended up finishing my ballet course with a broken arm.”

During this time, Laurer was also working on shaping her body. “I don’t think I ever realized my physical strength or my physical appearance, being larger – I have good genes, I know that – because I have always been so girly-girly-girly, ever since I was little. I loved fashion, loved makeup, loved dressing up – all part of the performing, as well. I tried sports when I was younger, and I wasn’t good at any of them. I also was coming from a place where I didn’t like to compete, I didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, I didn’t want anybody to hurt my feelings. I was very much a loner, so I was not much of a team [player].”

The combination of wanting to be physically active and her aversion to team sports led Laurer to the gym in her mid-teens. “When I first started doing it, it was purely out of boredom,” she relates. “At that time, there were not a lot of women bodybuilding. I would spend hours at the gym and I loved taking aerobics classes, I loved dancing to the music, so I would do hours and hours of that, but then go over to the guys’ section, too, and try to learn what they were doing. People would come up and try to help me as I was [weight-]lifting, show me the right way to do things and then I just got strong and I started noticing my body changing. It was almost a sense of puberty for me, to go at that age and start lifting weights and seeing your body change, but all the changes coming with it were very developed [musculature].”

Other changes came as well. “I started to make friends [at the gym], it occupied my time, I knew I was on to something. I knew [that female bodybuilding] was very resisted outside of that world, once I stepped outside of the gym, that people were looking at me again, but they were looking at me in a different way, and two, that it was very powerful within that world. I could see both facets of how people reacted to my physical appearance, and it became a focal point. I was already a pretty big, strong girl. And so when I got in that atmosphere, the people around me were constantly putting me to the test and they found it fascinating. And to me, it was a sense of accomplishment if I lifted one more pound the next day or I could start to see the guns popping out, or some abs.”

The desire to perform was still as strong as ever, but Laurer says she did not immediately realize that her developed physique put her at odds with the more conventional types usually called for in supporting roles and TV commercials. “[Bodybuilding was more] a strength thing to me, and then just the interest in how you could sculpt your body and how much I didn’t know about it, so I began to read more about it, and it was this constant challenge and discovery. So I did that outside of my ambitions as far as performing, but I couldn’t step outside of the box and see how very different I was becoming physically and strengthwise and probably commanding quite a presence everywhere I went. But I couldn’t see that in how I thought of myself, because to me, it was just normal. I wasn’t going for bodybuilding shows or the bodybuilding magazines – I was driving to New York, trying to get commercials or try out for parts, going on the casting calls I’d heard about. And people would look at me and automatically think I was a bodybuilder or a wrestler, and I was never very appealing to the commercial market. When you’re first starting out, you just don’t know, you don’t see yourself that way – we all look different, we all have different characteristics, so for me, it was just another characteristic, just another trait.”

Laurer knew that what she still wanted to do was act – but what was the best route to getting some kind of role? “When I started trying out for commercials and shows, I knew I wanted to be on the screen. I was going to do that – any way I could see my face on television. My television watching consisted of, ‘Could I do that or not?’ At that point, I remember watching TV and thinking, ‘Well, could I do that commercial?’ or ‘Could I do this TV show?’ I started to get that funky feeling that I was not going to fit into the box that I was watching every night. [It] was a bit like anguish, because I knew that was what I wanted to do and that I was not going to fit in there. And then comically and jokingly, I saw wrestling on TV and I said, ‘Well, I could do that – it’s kind of silly, but boy, what a character I could be on something like that.’ ”

It took several years, but Laurer eventually got a shot on both wrestling TV programs and in live performances in the persona she developed as the bodyguard/wrestler Chyna, a character who took her all over the world. Laurer has especially fond memories of her time in Japan, where, she says, “I learned how to grapple, really learned how to fight with martial arts, which was absolutely amazing.” Japan has a different attitude towards wrestling than the U.S., Laurer elaborates. “It’s definitely sport, it’s not sport entertainment. These are men who train hours in a dojo and then tackle or get choked out. It sounds brutal, but it’s actually one of my greatest life’s achievements and I’m so grateful for that experience, to have ever been a part of that man’s world, because it’s just so respectful and you see the most incomparable athletes, brilliant fighters. It’s like a physical chess game, whereas here in professional wrestling, I would say it’s stunt person’s entertainment – soap opera with a lot of physicality. Here [in the U.S.], it’s very interactive with the audience. So when I went to Japan, you’re in front of so many thousands of people watching a very respected, very serious sporting event. You have seventy thousand people, you could hear a pin drop, and you could hear the breathing of the athletes and the movement on the mat.”

Through it all, though, Laurer never gave up her dream of acting. Guest roles included the comedies “Third Rock From the Sun” and “Sabrina the Teenaged Witch” and – a precursor to her part in “Illegal Aliens” – as a hostile alien who tangled with Adrian Paul in the series premiere of “Tracker.” Finally, she parted company with the wrestling world and is now acting full-time. It hasn’t always been an easy transition: “I was already in the entertainment industry, so I was just going to keep going. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, I’ve got to move, because my work’s going to be in Hollywood.’ In my mind, I was just going to continue working – ‘Oh, I’d better hurry up and find another job.’ And then when I came out [to Hollywood], it was like, I was not in this world. It’s a whole different procedure, you need proper representation, proper management, proper direction.”

There was a initially a problem with how she was perceived, Laurer notes with a laugh, “Because most wrestlers are bad actors, they are seen as solely having a presence or a character, they are within their own little world, so you always do better or strive harder or work harder when you really, really want something. How did I start punching a hole in there? By stepping out on my own two feet and going for it and doing it. Luckily, that choice was to continue fulfilling my dream. I suppose if I wasn’t known to tons of people out there, I would have gone out and gotten a job at being a Spanish teacher or I’d probably be still applying with the F.B.I. and the Secret Service. There were some dark, dark days. You talk about survival of the fittest – you start to see it, you start to realize what your capacity is, what kind of human being you are, which is fairly scary to know how powerful certain things can be. And then I started getting that excitement of the world changing for me. I did that through the venue of television, interviews, still interacting with people, and I started to meet people who ‘got’ me.”

Being cast in “Illegal Aliens” came about through an audition. “It’s the biggest acting role I’ve had as far as the acting and the role.” Laurer thinks she’s a lot better at playing an extraterrestrial in a human body here than she was in “Tracker”: “I think about it now, and it shows me how far I’ve come since all of those acting roles as a guest appearance role by ‘Chyna.’ I’m a much better actress now. I had time to really focus and prepare on it. I got to go way out there as an actor and try different things within the character and I just loved every second of it. I just wanted to do one more take every time we did something. And it was fascinating to have studied the role, thinking that I was going to play it one way and then have it be completely different to how I thought I was going to play it.”

Years of working with men in the male-dominated wrestling arena helped with the characterization, Laurer says. “I have been around mostly men, and boys will be boys – I’ve seen a lot of ‘manly behavior,’ quote-unquote, good and bad. Mostly good, to be honest, but I’ve picked up the dirty socks and underwear, too,” she laughs. “So I’m able to let loose and kind of be one of the boys. I knew how to play that part in that manner, which allowed me then to focus on the dialogue. There were [elaborate character] names in there and alien talk and long, long lines. Then the director says, ‘Change the style of the character’ and you have to take that and go somewhere completely different with it. But I think that naturally, I’m doing five things at once. I knew the character, I knew my role. It’s one of those things that I always wished would happen when I said, ‘When the job comes along …’ I’m very different, I know that about me. This is what I want to do. I’m not going to be easily accepted, I’m not the most commercial girl, but when [the right part] does happen, it’s going to be the most perfect thing that only you could do best. And no matter how big, how large, how small, no matter where it fits in the grand scheme of things, you know it when you get that role. And I think that this was a very good example of a role that was perfect. I couldn’t wait for my turn, to get out there and do it, but I was watching the whole process, too, and seeing how it’s all going to come together, paying attention to the other actors, how their roles were, what went on on set with the different scenes and now the anticipation and the anxiously awaiting how it’s going to be put together in the editing.”

Laurer has changed his physical look somewhat in making the transition to full-time actress. “When I was a wrestler, it was a good thing that I had more meat on my bones. Physically, it was my job. I had to for safety reasons. I’m getting nailed to the mat every night. It was an effort to eat and still look good, sculpted, walk the red carpet.” Since changing her focus to acting, “I have toned down my body, slimmed down by quite a few pounds. I’m liking my look more, I have to say – I feel better, I look better. It just feels more natural and better to me, and it’s not my job [any more] to have to beef up my neck so I don’t break it when I roll on it. I’m starting to now be more cautious of what I eat and go, ‘Hmm, how is my body going to change now that I’m not doing the same things?’ Instead of counting how much protein or as much as I can eat, now I’m going, ‘Maybe my body will just tell me when I’m hungry and I’ll eat.’ I’m loving it.”

So what’s next after “Illegal Aliens”? “It was funny stuff. And it just felt so natural and so fun to do that it makes me laugh just thinking about it now, because I know the comedy will transfer over very well. So I’d like to do I think a sitcom one day – it would be fun. I like the format, how it’s done, too. I do love comedy and I think I’m good at it, fortunately,” Laurer laughs.

Laurer is also up for doing drama or even hosting a talk show – she’s had discussions with several networks about television projects – right now, there are many possibilities. “The unknown is very scary. On the other hand, I feel like I’ve been growing up a lot over the last year and I’ve been very grateful, very emotional and very proud when I look back to a year ago and I think, ‘Oh, my gosh, what’s going to happen? What am I going to do? Who is going to be with me?’ To stop and [feel], ‘Something’s happening,’ it’s that once in a lifetime epiphany. I am starting to have a real excitement about my future. [In the past], I think it just was [getting through] every day, and I wanted things for the sense of the accomplishment of getting it done and having to do something. Now I’m really going for something and thinking that I have a life.”