Netflix’s new docuseries on disgraced former WWE chairman Vince McMahon has a number of disturbing disclosures across its six episodes, but one of the most surprising concerns the veteran professional wrestling promoter and his daughter Stephanie McMahon.
During an episode discussing his family’s roles as on-screen WWE characters, McMahon, 79, discloses to Netflix filmmakers that he devised a scenario about him impregnating his own daughter.
In the recently published docuseries, McMahon reveals, “One of my storyline ideas involved Stephanie becoming pregnant, and I believe I was the one who impregnated her—my character.” “I thought it was that, but it was ‘No.’ “That version failed.”
The disturbing scene occurs in the series’ fifth episode, just as the documentary is demonstrating how far McMahon would push performers to undertake controversial storylines during what was known as WWE’s “Attitude Era” in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
During the sequence, Netflix filmmakers ask many former WWE wrestlers if they’ve ever been in a situation with McMahon when he wrote a controversial script, and they think, “This is going too far.”
“Yeah, there were a couple, but I’m not going to tell you which one,” Stephanie chuckles when posed the question.
Stephanie’s real-life husband, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who has played her love interest on television since the late 1990s, likewise chuckles at the question. “Yeah [there were], and then Vince would make me do it anyway,” he recalls.
Throughout the Netflix documentary, present and former WWE employees discuss what it was like to work with McMahon and how there was an underlying pressure to say “yes” to everything McMahon requested of them—both on and off-screen.
Former WWE Women’s Champion and WWE Hall of Fame wrestler Trish Stratus admits that performers worried about punishment if they didn’t comply with requests.
Stratus then recounts a circumstance in which she turned down McMahon’s suggestion that she make out with another female wrestler during a televised appearance. The following week, Stratus claims, the script had her lose her crown to another wrestler. She chuckles, raising another eyebrow at the camera.
McMahon first resigned as WWE chairman in June 2022 due to sexual harassment charges, then announced his retirement a month later, only to return and reestablish himself as chairman six months later.
During a September 2023 merger with UFC, the long-time WWE chairman sold the majority of his stock in the firm. McMahon resigned as WWE president again in January 2024, following additional charges in a lawsuit filed by a former employee accusing him of sexual assault, harassment, and trafficking her to other workers, including wrestlers.
Following the filing of the January 2024 lawsuit, McMahon rejected the claims and declined to continue appearing in interviews for Netflix’s new series. Earlier this week, McMahon attacked the documentary, calling it “misleading” and “deceptive.”
The case is presently on hold while the US Justice Department examines McMahon and multiple sexual misconduct charges against him, according to ABC News.