The Princess of the Black Throne is finally returning to the ring. It’s been eight months since Julia Hart last graced the squared circle on All Elite Wrestling (AEW), having dropped her TBS championship to Willow Nightingale back in April before disappearing from TV to undergo shoulder surgery.
Hart makes her much-anticipated return to in-ring action against Jamie Hayter at “AEW Dynamite: Fight for the Fallen,” which will be simulcast on TBS and Max on Wednesday, Jan. 1.
“That adrenaline rush is what I miss most from being gone for eight months. I could literally feel it through my legs I was so excited. I was trying not to shake,” said Hart, who heralded her return to AEW TV with a trilogy of introspective vignettes featuring warring versions of Hart’s past and present personas.
“The first time I got hurt, back in January while I was still champion, I couldn’t wrestle for like five weeks,” she told Variety. “I had these ideas set for that, but they didn’t make sense at the time because I was still onscreen. I’ve always had these in my back pocket, but I think I didn’t know what they were.”
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But while the final product speaks for itself, Hart said her initial pitch for the return teasers was a harder sell. “I’m not very good with my words, I’m better at visually showing it. I remember saying ‘Yeah, and then I go shoot myself’ and people were like ‘What are you talking about?’ I’m like ‘Let me just go film it. And then you’ll understand.”
Hart credited editor/photographer Dani Venen with helping shape the trilogy of vignettes: “Dani picks up what I’m saying just like that. Me waking up to the ringing of a phone, the idea at first was a letter, and Dani was like ‘You love ‘The Black Phone’, why don’t you do a black phone?’ I tell her what I’m thinking, and she can make it 10 times better.”
Beyond horror favorites like “The Black Phone” and “Coraline,” Hart said music plays a large part in her creative process, and cited listening to her entrance music, “Harder Hart,” as a confidence booster. “I try to imagine myself in a music video and how I would interpret the music. Music is definitely what’s inspired me the most.”
As for the musical inspirations behind Julia Hart? “The ‘Kill Bill’ album,” she said, referring to the film’s soundrack. “I love ‘Twisted Nerve’ so much. I literally listened to it this morning. ‘Bang Bang,’ ‘That Certain Female’… that whole album can put me in my character mood.”
Hart also cited Uma Thurman’s “Kill Bill” heroine as one of the primary inspirations for her House of Black character. “I love the ‘Kill Bill’ movies because of how Beatrix holds herself. She’s so badass. I love that. I love ‘Wednesday,’ obviously. Stevie Nicks, too. ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ in the Netflix series, how she has an attitude and she’s sassy and she’s young.
“I call myself the ‘Princess of the Black Throne’ instead of the ‘Queen’ because I feel like princesses are more naive,” she added. “I still have a lot to learn, I still have so much more to go. I’m just a couple years into wrestling. Learning more in-ring wise, and figuring out people’s brains better, because I love to be the keeper of secrets. Figuring people out, figuring out their weaknesses, how to tear them down and beat them.”
Reigning TBS champion Mercedes Moné is one of the many women Hart said she’s eager to wrestle and learn from, now that she’s back in the ring.
“Definitely Mercedes (Moné), she has my title,” Hart said. “Probably Willow (Nightingale) too, she took the belt from me. I’ve never worked with Mariah (May), I’ve never worked with Toni (Storm). I would love to work with Serena Deeb, I think she’s someone I could learn a lot from in the ring.”
But before AEW’s youngest-ever champion sets her sights on regaining the TBS championship, Hart said her first priority is Jamie Hayter, whose backstage segments Hart has been regularly hijacking to air her vignettes. “She just had a great comeback, so I gotta show my comeback is gonna be better than hers. Taking out the locker room one by one, and sorry, Jamie, you’re first.”
“AEW Dynamite: Fight for the Fallen” simulcasts live Wednesday, Jan. 1, at 8 p.m. ET on TBS and Max. This reps the beginning of a new multi-platform media rights agreement between Warner Bros. Discovery and AEW; for the first time, episodes of “AEW Dynamite” and “AEW Collision” will be streamed live on Max in the U.S. at the same time they air on TBS and TNT, respectively.