Some people have jobs so cool we'd actually enjoy attending their marathon Zoom meetings. Even the ones that could totally have been an email.
Not to say we don't cherish our all-important responsibility of bringing you every last piece of need-to-know information about the casts of Bridgerton and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but we don't have our own glam squad or a Rolodex filled with famous names, now do we?
But the impossibly cool people we'll be profiling in E! News' latest series totally do. Plus access to things like private drivers, designer garb and the type of professional titles we'd drop with wild abandon at parties, dinner dates or while chatting with the barista at Starbucks. Welcome to A Day in the Life...
Few people can claim they were born to do something quite as vehemently as Stephanie McMahon. The daughter of WWE CEOs Vince and Linda McMahon, she first stepped into the ring as a middle schooler modeling for the WWE Shop catalog and has been notching wins (in the arena and the boardroom) ever since, moving up from receptionist to her current role as chief brand officer.
But for the onetime Women's Champion, nothing will feel quite as victorious as the moments just before they open the doors at Tampa Bay's Raymond James Stadium for WrestleMania 37.
After the coronavirus pandemic forced them to make their tentpole event virtual last year, "It just has an extra special significance," she told E! News of the two-day celebration kicking off April 10 (and streaming on Peacock). "WrestleMania is the event that my father created. And my parents mortgaged everything that they owned to make it happen and it was really their vision of how we were going to put WWE on the map."
And so every year, right as the festivities begin, she thinks about her grandfather Vincent K. McMahon, who founded the regional Capitol Wrestling Corporation that would eventually become the WWE, and her dad and "all of the accomplishments, everything he's been through to get us through this point."
But before she could get to that point, there was a whole gauntlet of meetings, interviews and one very fancy workout in her closet. She walked E! News through her jam-packed Thursday.
6:15 a.m. On the first day of April, Stephanie was treated to the early bird special, with a group of particularly noisy feathered friends outside her Connecticut window waking her a full 30 minutes before her set alarm. "I was not happy about it," she admitted. "That half hour is pretty precious."
7:00 a.m. Showered and dressed in sweats, she came downstairs to discover that her middle daughter, 12-year-old Murphy, had fed their two giant English Mastiffs and readied the morning pancake mix. Chocolate chip flapjacks are on the menu every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday "and sometimes more than that," noted Stephanie. "But I actually had to curtail it because they were, at one time, eating them every day."
7:45 a.m. Carbs loaded and dogs cleaned up ("They are giant and slobbery and goopy"), she ushered daughters Aurora, 14, Murphy and Vaughn, 10, into her extended cab Cadillac SUV along with the pups, who claim the entire folded-down third row. "One is 230 pounds and the other is 200 pounds, so it's a lot of meat in that wagon," she joked. "But it's so much fun."
The crew made it about halfway down the driveway—having navigated an argument over the front seat and a fight between two of the girls that was ongoing from the night before—"and one of my daughters had forgotten her water bottle and had to come back and grab it," Stephanie said. "There's always something!"
9:00 a.m. Ahhhhh, me time. With all three girls shuttled off to their various schools, Stephanie finally had time to finish her morning protein shake ("I put two packets of Starbucks instant coffee and one Stevia and a scoop of almond butter and it's like a Starbucks coffee drink. It's so delicious") and listen to the news on the car radio. "That makes me feel so old!" she admitted. "But..."
10:00 a.m. Into the ring she goes: Having stopped at home to change and grab a morning Nespresso, she drove to the office ("There's not a lot of people back—it's under 20") and began her gauntlet of meetings. "WrestleMania is next weekend so we're pretty far down the pike on everything," she said of wrapping up final details," and, of course, the big transition to Peacock, which consumes a ton of time. But it's all good."
First up, a half-hour prep with the international team over Zoom for a presentation she's giving to their partners in Africa, followed by a stretch of email answering, a 30-minute one-on-one with a sales exec and another virtual strategy session with the international team on Google Meet about "how we want to really approach our growth and what our plan is moving forward," she shared. "That was a great meeting with a lot of upside and the result of years of work and planning."
12:00 p.m. Even glam time is double-booked. Stephanie spends a 90-minute hair-and-make-up session talking through the rest of the afternoon and the entire WrestleMania slate. As an added bonus, she joked, "My appearance improves throughout the day." Not that anyone in her 1 p.m. meeting would know as she remained incognito to finish getting ready and eat a quick lunch: "The beauty of Zoom, you can just turn your camera off."
1:30 p.m. Ready for the spotlight, she chats all things WrestleMania with ESPN's Arda Ocal and then shoots a series of videos, including a thank you address to the Mania Club fans who raised upwards of $33,000 for her and husband Paul "Triple H" Levesque's pediatric cancer charity Connor's Cure. "Community relations are important to me, obviously," said Stephanie of overseeing WrestleMania's charitable components, "but it's been a huge part of WWE's DNA ever since our inception."
4:00 p.m. Now work it out. After an hourlong executive meeting in the boardroom, Stephanie hopped on the treadmill in her closet to train while she talked business with her office manager. "Here's me in full hair and makeup on the treadmill," she cracked, "but it is what it is."
7:00 p.m. Joke's on her! Having powered through another 60-minute meeting, some prep and a full email inbox, she decided to engage in a little April Fools' Day fun. On a walk back from the ladies' room, she noticed a coworker had left his backpack outside as he chatted with her office manager. "So I just thought it was funny to hide his backpack in the adjacent office because I'm a little bit mischievous with how my brain works," she recalled. "But I'm peeking out of the corner as he walks out—the guy totally finds his bag in two seconds. So it kinda backfired."
9:00 p.m. Finally arriving home after a final 7:15 p.m. session with her VP of brand, it's time to clock in at her night job. "I was planning on packing," she said, "but one of my girls had a hard day and needed to talk." She'd categorize the 45-minute chat as the most crucial meeting of the day. "Obviously being a parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world," she noted. "You want to be there for your kids and say all the right things and protect them and make them feel better. But at the end of the day, they have to live their lives and they're going to go through all the things that we go through. And that's what's so hard because you can't protect them their whole lives."
9:45 p.m. But they're never too old for some snuggles. Stephanie's favorite nightly ritual sees her cuddling with each daughter for 15-20 minutes, a carryover from their childhood bedtime routine. "It's such precious, precious time with them," she said. "I love my business and it's my family's business, but my family comes first and that will never change."
12:15 a.m. Down for the count: Following a chat with her husband ("He's been in Florida all week producing our shows"), Stephanie hit the mat(tress) ready to do it all over again in a few hours. "I'm in a unique growth point as a person and an executive and I'm really excited about some changes that I'm making," she teased of what lies ahead in her career. "It's also super uncomfortable." The way she sees it, she continued, "Growing should be challenging, it should be hard. And I'm in a really good, but challenging and hard, place right now. But it's exciting too." Sounds like someone is ready to rumble.
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