Chris Jericho tagged in

Not every pro wrestler can say they’ve shared the ring with Nick Offerman and Nicole Kidman, but Chris Jericho can.

The Winnipeg-raised heavyweight, 55, plays himself in Margo’s Got Money Troubles, a new Apple TV+ comedy-drama from David E. Kelley (Boston Legal), based on the 2024 novel of the same name by American author Rufi Thorpe.

Elle Fanning plays Margo who, as the daughter of an ex-pro wrestler (Offerman) and a Hooters waitress (Michelle Pfeiffer), has always had to be scrappy.

So when Margo gets pregnant after an affair with her college prof, has to drop out of college and finds herself unemployed at 20 with an infant and no job, she readily accepts her estranged dad Jinx’s request to move in in exchange for childcare.

In the meantime, Margo needs money, so she decides to start an account on OnlyFans — a paid video platform where performers monetize their (usually sexual) interactions — and discovers a creative outlet that, as it turns out, has more in common with the world of wrestling than one might think.

Jericho loved the story, and originally read for the part of Jinx.

“I heard about this project through my agents and they mentioned it was the part of a former pro wrestler whose wife was a former Hooters girl — which is exactly my story,” he says on the phone from New York City, where he’s filming another major project.

“My wife used to work at Hooters and obviously, I was in the wrestling business.”

Jericho — who has a diploma in creative communications from Red River College — says he usually shies away from wrestler parts, but with A24, the buzzy production house behind such films as Everything Everywhere All at Once and Uncut Gems, and Apple TV attached, he knew it had the potential to be something cool.

“I read for this guy called David Rubin who, I didn’t realize at the time, but he’s one of the biggest casting directors in Hollywood. I did the audition and he said, ‘Oh, wow, you’re a real actor.’ I thought, ‘That’s a pretty nice compliment,’ then I found out who this guy was and I was like, that’s a huge compliment,” he says with a laugh.

“Obviously, I didn’t get the part — they gave it to Emmy Award-winning actor Nick Offerman — but they came back to me and said, ‘We really like what you did and we think we can find something for you in this.’”

Jericho appears in Episode 4, Buddies, in which Jinx and Margo attend a wrestling fan expo.

“It was interesting because they decided that they wanted me to play myself, which was a little bit weird, but in retrospect I really like it because it’s almost like a Curb Your Enthusiasm thing, where there’s real-life people playing themselves and actors playing characters,” he says.

Jericho isn’t just at a booth signing autographs in the episode; he’s actually doing wrestling moves with Jinx.

“Doing them with Nick was cool because he obviously had trained very hard to get into shape for the part and to learn as much about wrestling as he could,” Jericho says, adding that he and the Parks and Recreation star created a whole backstory for Jinx and Jericho.

“The move that we did in the show is called a hip toss, which is not an easy move to do. You really gotta trust your guy and you have to have a real good base. I wouldn’t take a hip toss from a wrestler that’s only been training for three weeks, but it was Nick Offerman, and he was into it, so we did it and it worked out really good.”

This is also the episode where we meet Kidman’s character, the wrestler-turned-lawyer Lace.

“She comes onstage and is fantastically diva-tastic, shall we say,” Jericho says. “Not in a mean way. She’s just got the hairdresser and the makeup girl and it’s like, this is Nicole Kidman, one of the all-time greats of our generation.”

Jericho appreciated the way wrestling is handled in the show, as a site of self-expression and creativity.

“It’s not a pro-wrestling show, but the elements of wrestling that exist in it treat it with real reverence and respect, which I also really liked about it. Jinx had a lot of issues and got out of the business, but he was a personality and Margo sees that personality and uses that to start developing her own personality, and it’s such a cool concept,” he says.

“To be asked to be part of it was a huge honour.”

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is streaming on AppleTV+, with new episodes arriving Wednesdays.

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