In an interview with Stephanie Chase (via Fightful), Brody King spoke about Julia Hart pitching the idea of joining the House of Black, which she did back in 2021. The slow heel turn happened after Malakai Black spewed black mist in her eyes.
King said: “Julia was this little cheerleader girl when we met her. She had an idea and she approached Malakai and was like, ‘I have this idea, what do you think about it?’ Malakai was like, ‘Why don’t you cut some promos? Why don’t you develop the character and bring it back to me and we’ll talk about it.’ That’s what she did. She went to work, came up with multiple promos, took the time on her own to book time with people shooting the promos, and really developed this character. She would ask me questions on, ‘Why this? why that?’ I started training with her as well and bring out a different side of her that wasn’t the bubbly cheerleader. She took to everything like a sponge. Character-wise and personality-wise, she is so far advanced for her years and wrestling and her age. She’s only 22 and she has the whole world ahead of her and she already has a big step up on it. It was definitely surprising. It takes a lot of guts to go up to three scary grown men that you don’t know, ‘Hey, I have this idea. What do you think?’ That’s the kind of hunger and drive we need out of young people in AEW. To take that chance and risk. We didn’t even have approval from Tony (Khan) that this was going to happen. ‘Let’s make everything and then present it.’ Once it was presented, ‘Okay, this looks cool.’ I always call her my wrestling daughter. We go out to dinner once a week; me, my wife, her, and her husband. Whenever she has questions about wrestling or needs advice, we’re always here. We’ve taken her shopping to where she picked up the hat and was like, ‘I think this is cool.’ ‘You’re buying that.’ We bought her the hat and the rest is history.“
