AEW star Darby Allin recently sat down for an in-depth interview on the “Maggie & Perloff LIVE” podcast to discuss his character, his high-risk style, and his future ambitions. The former TNT Champion, a top babyface in the company, opened up about the possibility of a future heel turn and his off-screen passion for filmmaking, which he studied in school.
When asked about the possibility of turning heel, Allin admitted he could see a path to it, but nioted that his primary motivation has always been a personal one.
“You know, honestly it just wherever the wind takes me. And I feel a lot of fans, they’re always like, ‘Darby, you don’t have to do — you don’t have to go crazy anymore to impress us.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me.’ I actually love going out there and jumping off ladders or whatever it is I get myself into. But I also — on the flip side, I do see how fast the fans forget about you. I do see how quick they move on. Say, if you got like an injury or something there, ‘All right, what’s the next shiny toy?’ So in that sense, I could see being a heel and just straight up being like, ‘You are so ungrateful for what it is that we do,’ you know? But at the end of the day, I don’t do it for them. So I feel like you can’t get mad at them for that. But who knows? Wherever the wind takes young Darby Allin, maybe I will uh go rogue.”
Allin, who attended film school before pursuing a career in skateboarding and wrestling, also discussed whether he has any interest in acting. He revealed that he would much rather be the one behind the camera, a place where he feels he could truly “flourish.”
“So, I went to film school. So I’d rather direct films. I’d rather do the screenwriting and directing. That’s kind of like where I feel like I would flourish more. And like, I’m not saying I wouldn’t do acting. It’d be fun, but I don’t want to do something that doesn’t speak to me as a human that interests — like, I got to do something that interests me. Because when I first started wrestling, I said, ‘I’m either going to make it as Darby or I’m going to fail as Darby, but I’m not changing a thing. And with AEW, like I haven’t changed a single thing about myself. And that’s why I feel like people are like, ‘Whoa.’ Like they gravitate, because it’s like — I’m really authentic, and they know I’m not playing a character. I’m not part of the machine. You can’t create me. I am me. So it just would have to be something that generally interests me as a human.”
Allin is coming off a victory at the AEW WrestleDream pay-per-view, where he defeated his long-time rival Jon Moxley in a brutal “I Quit” match, thanks in part to a assist from Sting.