Kris Statlander Responds To Criticism Of Alien Character

One of the most controversial characters in All Elite Wrestling belongs to Kris Statlander. Her portrayal of an alien has always been a point of contention since her debut. Now, she has addressed the criticism of her character.

Speaking on AEW Unrestricted, Statlander explained she wanted to make her character more visually distinct. Here is the quote, courtesy of Wrestling Inc.:

“With the new look, because I know there’s a lot of criticism about ‘how is she an alien? All she does is have some dots and lines on her face and stuff like that.’ So I wanted to make it more visual for fans to kind of understand a little bit better. Just because I say I’m an alien or whatever, you can interpret whatever you don’t know however, you want. If that’s how I interpreted it, that’s fine. It’s my take on it, but I feel like this look is so much better and doing it on this side with the purple hair, the whole idea is that this is the alien hair coming out of my head.

“So that’s why the green is on this side, and that’s the real skin. This is the real hair, the contact [and] the real eyeball and so I saw some things on Twitter where people are like, ‘Oh, this reminds me of V,’ which I think it’s short for ‘The Visitors.’ It was some TV show back in like the [’80s] where they had green reptile skin peeled underneath. They peeled away the human skin underneath the reptile skin, and I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even try that,’ but because there is actually something that it looks similar to, now there’s something that people can actually relate it to, which makes it more believable that it’s a thing.

“But then, again, people still criticize. ‘Oh, the alien thing is dumb and stuff.’ That’s fine. You don’t have to like it. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad wrestler or anything. I don’t even care if people don’t like the character. I always find it funny when people are like, ‘Oh, I think Kris is awesome. She just has a dumb gimmick,’ and it’s like, that’s great. I don’t care. I don’t care if you don’t like the character. It’s what I feel comfortable with portraying myself, but if you think I’m a good wrestler, that’s all I care about. That’s all I need to hear.”

Kris Statlander recently returned from injury in the Arcade Anarchy match, helping Best Friends defeat Miro and Kip Sabian.

Statlander also opened up about her recovery in the interview. You can read more about that here.

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