Paul Walter Hauser

Kurt Angle, not all the people that get put at the top.

I'm a very dumb person. Serve it up, bro.

Depends on the role. Depends on the role. There are certain things, like Richard Jewell, I would learn my lines a week, like five to seven days in advance. And I'd be very overly familiar with them, and it could kind of fall out of me a lot easier. And then there's other things. If I'm doing a comedy, there's just less of a stress of learning the lines. It just feels like... I don't know.

It's like Bam Margero the skateboard. It's not like he's in shape and skateboards all the time, but he can still jump on a skateboard and do whatever because he's Bam. That's kind of how I feel about comedy. But I think that's actually a really dangerous way to... It's a dangerous attitudinal stance because you can then sometimes give 85% when you should be giving 100%. Yeah. So it depends.

But yeah, my whole thing is I learn one page at a time. So I'll always know the first page of dialogue better than the last. But for me, that's just my process. I learn one page at a time. The biggest audition I ever had page-wise, I think I learned... I think I, Tanya was 13 pages. I memorized and I think scream for, I memorized like 15 pages. Jeez.

Yeah. If I have to, if I have to like feel the words and, and,

say them in a way where it you don't feel the timidity in the character because like i've i've met some weird racist ass dudes at dive bars or you know one of those low-key racist guys who's like putting the bait out and seeing if you'll if you'll touch the the pole line yeah see if you're friend or foe yeah the yeah the uber driver who's like talking politics and then it's like

Yeah, you know how these people are. Then they're looking at you in the rear view and you're like, I want to freaking die right now. I don't want to be in this guy's car. I've met enough of them that you can't have timidity. It's got to be, if you were born with that ideological stance, it has to be as normal as, well, yeah, we always have pork chops on Thursdays. Yeah, right.

It just has to be normal to you. So you don't say it because you're like, look at me, I'm saying the rap lyrics behind closed doors. You're doing it because you have to make sure it's right. But I would say what's harder is when you improvise with a bad character.

There were lines that I said in Black Bird and Black Klansman that I improvised that you feel very guilty about because afterwards you go, well, that wasn't in the script and you still got there. So how'd you get there? That's tough. That's acting.

It's also acting. Yeah. It's also sometimes good acting. You're like, oh, that is a really good line. Unfortunately, it's devastatingly awful, but that's who you're playing on the day.

Yeah. I had a disgusting moment where I felt so bad. I'm doing a scene with John David Washington, who's about as likable and sweet of a person as you can get on a movie set. And I did something where I stuck my mouth out to look like a ape or a primate with my tongue, uh, to, to piss him off in the scene.

Now, Spike gave me the direction of you're up in his grill, do something that could provoke him, but he won't be provoked. So like, that's what I thought of for that character. But the moment after it was done, I went up to John David. I go, Hey man, I just want to say, and he goes, I know, I know like very much said it. Like I know where you're going with it.

And I like, we were on the same page here. Don't, don't take your foot off the pedal just because you're uncomfortable.

And I really admired his grace and professionalism with that. And there have been moments like that in other projects. And sometimes you just got to be able to have a conversation preliminarily too. Sometimes I won't do something because I'm like, I don't want to get... I don't want someone to create a story of me being a bad person because I made a creative choice.

So let me run this by them first to make sure they're comfortable. And 90% of the time, the other actor's like, oh, you shouldn't have even told me. You should have just done it.

Yeah. That too. I'm always asking wrestlers, you know, like... These guys at MLW, that's their locker room. I'm a guest in their locker room. I'm new to the roster, and I really respect those guys and gals, and it's always about finding out what are we doing and how do we do it the best way that doesn't complicate something or hurt anybody long-term.

If they gave me that ultimatum and something weird happened where, say, in 2026, I undergo the Chris Pratt style transformation. Yeah. And MLW is taking off and they got a show on TV and they want to put a belt on me and we're doing the whole thing. If that opportunity presented itself, I would just hold my ground and say, you have to let me do both.

I don't think I would take the deal because at the end of the day, I love acting. It would hurt my feelings. It would hurt my spirit to not get to act in some capacity. And you got to ask my wife. My wife, Amy, is such a patient, grace-driven woman. She knows that when I go three, four, five months without acting... I'm not that fun to be around.

I'm like starved for attention and I'm like hell bent on making my jokes. And suddenly I'm in the kitchen and I'm trying to turn into Anthony Bourdain or Guy Fieri. Like, it's like, it's a very, you know, we're sick people actors. Yeah. So it's like, I think it would hurt the soul and the brain too much if I didn't do it. But I do think that there's a way to do both. And I'm trying to prove that.