Episode 421: Inside WCW's Wildest Creations
83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff
Podcast Heat
4.6 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2026
⏱️ 117 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this special edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff heads to Atlanta, Georgia, for a one of a kind sit down at AFX Studios with special effects legend Andre Freitas.
In this fascinating and rare interview, Andre pulls back the curtain on the creativity and innovation that helped define the look and feel of WCW during its most iconic era. From the creation of the legendary Crow Sting character to the stunning makeup transformations of stars like Kevin Nash and Syxx, Andre shares the stories behind the artistry that brought these larger than life personas to life.
Hear how characters like Glacier and Mortis were developed from concept to reality, and the inspiration behind one of WCW's most memorable mascots, Wildcat Willie. It's an inside look at the unsung side of the wrestling business where imagination, design, and execution collide.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today's episode comes to you from the Blue Chew Studio right now. |
| 0:02.9 | When you buy two months of Blue Chew Gold, you get the third a very special edition of 83 weeks. |
| 0:36.7 | No, I am not sitting in my treehouse in Cody, Wyoming, |
| 0:41.1 | looking out over the Buffalo Bill Reservoir in the Rocky Mountains. |
| 0:46.2 | Not even close. |
| 0:47.4 | I'm in Atlanta at AFX Studios in joining me, Andre Freitas. |
| 0:52.6 | Special effects master extraordinary. It's great to see you, |
| 0:57.2 | Andre. Good to see you, Eric. It's been a while. A ton of really cool stuff in your studio |
| 1:03.0 | from movies, television series, but it all started with WCW, didn't it? Yes, the early days, |
| 1:10.7 | yeah. How'd you get started? First, before we talk about how you with WCW, didn't that? Yes, the early days, yeah. |
| 1:11.0 | How'd you get started? |
| 1:12.2 | First, before we talk about how you found WCW or WCW found you, |
| 1:16.7 | what were you doing before you stepped foot into wrestling? |
| 1:20.4 | In around 87, I found special effects by seeing some stuff in a kid's room that I was in art class with. |
| 1:27.2 | He was making fake heads and my draws statues and little tiny things. |
| 1:31.7 | And when I saw that stuff, I was like, this is what I want to do because I was already sculpting, drawing monsters. |
| 1:37.1 | And I gravitated toward it, reading Fangoria magazine. |
| 1:40.6 | But there wasn't any internet. |
| 1:42.1 | So you go to the library, you buy that thing at the newsstand, and then you send away stuff in catalogs to get latex. And I started experimenting |
| 1:49.1 | with special effects from 87 to around 1990. And then when I graduated high school, I've got a |
| 1:56.6 | apprenticeship at the Smithsonian Museum as a technical sculptor and be part of their team. Well, let's talk about that for a minute. Let's let's skip over that part. So you're in high school and you got recruited. Well, how it all came about is there's a civics program in high school, like your history class, and everybody goes up to learn about the U.S. government to D.C. My dad wanted to pay for that because he thought |
| 2:18.1 | it would be better that we get some education about how the government's run. And when we did |
... |
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