Netflix’s new docuseries on disgraced former WWE chairman Vince McMahon has plenty of head-turning revelations throughout its six episodes, but one of the most shocking moments involves the longtime professional wrestling promoter and his daughter Stephanie McMahon.
During an episode which discusses his family’s involvement as on-screen WWE characters, McMahon, 79, at one point admits to Netflix producers that he wrote a storyline that involved him impregnating his own daughter.
“So, one of my storyline ideas was that Stephanie gets pregnant, and I think I was the one who impregnated her — my character,” McMahon says in the docuseries, released this week. “I think it was something like that and it was like, ‘No.’ That one didn’t make it.”
The shocking moment comes in the series’ fifth episode at a time when the documentary is illustrating just how far McMahon would push wrestlers to do controversial storylines during what was known as WWE’s “Attitude Era” in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
During the scene, Netflix producers ask several former WWE wrestlers whether they’ve ever experienced situations with McMahon where he’s written a controversial script and they’ve thought “this is too far.”
Vince and Stephanie McMahon.
Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
“Yeah, there were a couple but I’m not going to tell the one,” Stephanie laughs when she’s asked the question.
Stephanie’s real life husband Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who also played her love interest on screen since the late 90s, also laughs off the question. “Yeah [there were], and then Vince would make me do it anyway,” he says.
Throughout the Netflix series, current and former WWE employees open up about what it was like to work with McMahon and describe how there was an unspoken pressure to say “yes” to whatever McMahon asked them to do — both on screen and off screen.
“There was a bit of concern amongst performers that if you didn’t do what you were asked that you would get punished, and yeah, it did happen to some on occasion…sometimes,” former WWE Women’s Champion and WWE Hall of Fame wrestler Trish Stratus says, pointing to herself and nodding in recognition to the camera.
Stratus then points to a situation where one week she said no to an idea McMahon had for her to make out with another women’s wrestler during a televised segment. The very next week, Stratus says, the script had her lose her championship to another wrestler. “Maybe I got punished, I’m not sure,” she laughs, again raising an eyebrow to the camera.
McMahon first resigned as the chairman of WWE in June 2022 amid sexual harassment allegations and announced his retirement a month after, only to return and reinstate himself as WWE chairman six months later.
The longtime WWE chairman then sold a majority of his stake in the company during a September 2023 merger with UFC. McMahon again resigned as the head of WWE amid new allegations made in a January 2024 lawsuit filed by a former employee who accused him of sexual assault, harassment and trafficking her to other employees, including wrestlers.
McMahon has denied the allegations and refused to continue showing up for interviews Netflix had been conducting with him for its new documentary after the January 2024 lawsuit was filed. Earlier this week, McMahon slammed the docuseries, claiming it’s “misleading” and “deceptive.”
The lawsuit is currently on hold as the U.S. Justice Department investigates McMahon and several sexual misconduct allegationsthat have been made against him, according to ABC News.
