Paul Rudd Just Found Out His Best Character Inspired A Wrestler, See The Wonderful Video
Paul Rudd's character Andy from Wet Hot American Summer directly inspired the AEW All-Atlantic Champion, Orange Cassidy.
Paul Rudd has had a long, successful career portraying a wide variety of characters, from the heroic Ant-Man in the MCU to his math genius reporter Brian Fantana in Anchorman, but it’s his rare “Bad Boy” turn as Andy in Wet Hot American Summer that has had a surprising cultural impact. The denim-clad and obnoxiously laid back Andy was the inspiration for the greatest All-Elite Wrestling (AEW) champion, Orange Cassidy. During the Ant-Man 3 press tour, an interviewer made sure to inform Rudd of his greatest contribution to society.
Interviewer @whmullally made sure to even include a photo of Orange Cassidy so that Paul Rudd can see how exactly Andy’s look has been adapted for the wrestling ring. Sadly, what wasn’t shared is, just how amazing Orange Cassidy is in the ring as the ultimate slacker. Most wrestlers get pumped up and run around, shake the ropes, over-exaggerate all of their movements, but Cassidy is the complete opposite and completely in character as his Wet Hot American Summer inspiration.
Orange Cassidy doesn’t move in the ring unless he has to and a “high spot” of his matches is when he puts his hands in his pockets. The man behind the wrestling character is a gifted athlete, capable of flying out of the ring with no hands and making kicks to the shin look devastating. From looks to general slacker attitude, the two are similar, but Paul Rudd’s character has one other very important trait that drastically differentiates him from the AEW All-Atlantic Champion.
Andy is a complete sleazebag and openly cheats on his girlfriend Katie (Marguerite Moreau) with Lindsay (Elizabeth Banks) while choosing to eat pancakes instead of sharing a heartfelt goodbye on the last day of camp. Orange Cassidy is part of the Best Friends stable with Trent Barretta, Chuck Taylor, and the very evil, but very nice, Danhausen. While Paul Rudd’s classic character is obnoxiously self-centered (which leads to some of the best parts of the movie), Cassidy has always been depicted as loyal to his running mates.
Orange Cassidy is also not the first wrestler to take inspiration from a movie though he might be the only one to use Paul Rudd. The most famous example is Sting after he went from the surfer look to his goth leather jacket outfit taken from The Crow. Just a few years earlier, Razor Ramon debuted in the WWF as a family-friendly version of Al Pacino‘s Scarface.
Amazingly, Orange Cassidy didn’t base his previous character off of Paul Rudd, but he was Fire Ant in the independent Chikara promotion. By the time Rudd was Ant-Man though, Cassidy had already transitioned into an early version of his current gimmick, but it’s still a strange connection.
Paul Rudd can be seen this weekend in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania while Orange Cassidy can frequently be seen Wednesdays and Fridays on AEW’s weekly shows, Dynamite and Rampage. If you haven’t seen any clips of Cassidy in action, take some time and look him up, as he is everything right with professional wrestling today.
