Former WWE Diva and Divas Champion, Maryse, joins Diva Dirt for an exclusive interview to discuss her release from WWE, her upcoming project, House of Maryse and look back at her entire career. In a near one-hour audio, Maryse talks to us about her release from WWE, why she’s done with wrestling, whether she’d go to TNA, whether she’d pose for Playboy again and more. You can listen to the full interview here.

Maryse opens up about her relationship with The Miz, the scary stalker situation earlier this year, and reflects on her career. We talk to the Sexiest of the Sexy about her time in WWE ranging from the Diva Search, learning English on the job, the development of her character, winning the Divas Title, suffering a dislocated kneecap, the Divas division and so much more.

Here are some highlights of what Maryse said about:

Her WWE Release: “I think it was more mutual. I wanted to leave the company for a while now because I have other projects I want to work on and it was impossible to work on those projects being under contract with the WWE. I had six fantastic years with the WWE. I had a really good run. Two actually, with my two Divas Championships. After six years, I was looking at it and I said, ‘I need to keep growing’. That’s why I decided to take a break from wrestling and to leave because I wanted to focus on my next project which is House of Maryse.”

“Also, living in LA, I have other opportunities that I want to work on and I would love to be working on the big screen. I love playing different characters, and I would love to be playing different characters in movies or TV shows, instead of continuing my career with the WWE. I’m a business woman, I need to keep growing and reinvent myself, so that’s mainly the reason why I decided to be like, ‘Okay, I think it’s time to move on to the next chapter now’.”

Fans being upset to see her go: “The way I see it is, you can be a character on a TV show for years, then the TV show gets cancelled and your favorite actress or favorite comedian, you don’t see them for a little while and then you see them back doing something else. You can still be enjoying them performing on TV. To me, the WWE was… I was a character that I played for six years and now I’m ready to play a different character. They’ll see me again on TV. Everything is fine.”

The Evolution of Her Character: “They always saw me wrestle as a babyface when I was in developmental, so when I got to TV, I said that I wanted to be a heel. I said, ‘Just trust me. Just let me be a heel and I’ll show you’. To me, it’s just characters. It’s a little bit of you obviously, but it’s just characters. All of that happened little by little, especially in the live events, I would do something and the crowd would react to it like the hand gesture or the hair flip. One day I did that. I was feeling sassy that day and I said, ‘You know what, I’ll try this tonight’. I did it and the crowd just reacted well to it, so I kept it.”

Downside of the Divas division: “I feel like right now, all the girls they have in the Divas division are really talented and have so much potential. They can do so much. I just wish the WWE would give them more. You need to be able to build a character, you need to have time, you need to have a microphone and be able to talk so people can relate to you. Without that, it was really, really hard to build yourself- build your character, so I just wish they would give them more time and they would be more involved with the women’s division. They deserve it. There’s a lot of potential there, but you need to give a little bit to see that.”