Back when she was the 59th and last pick in the 2016 WWE brand draft, hardly anybody gave Carmella much of a chance of succeeding on the main roster, especially since she was separated from her former NXT charges, Enzo Amore and Big Cass, who were called up months earlier and drafted by Monday Night Raw. Times have drastically changed in the two years since then, as Carmella became the first-ever Ms. Money in the Bank in 2017 and cashed in her contract to become SmackDown Women’s Champion shortly after WrestleMania. These days, it’s hard to disagree with her “‘Mella is money” catchphrase, and as she recently related to a Massachusetts publication, she’s having lots of fun playing the heel champion on WWE television.
In a recent phone interview with the Worcester Telegram, Carmella accurately described the gist of her gimmick, describing herself as “very, very full of herself” while playing the “moonwalking, trash-talking Princess of Staten Island.” Fortunately, that’s not how she appears to be in real life, having grown up as a wrestling fan with a deep respect for the business instilled by her father, former WWE jobber Paul Vandale. But on television, the real-life Leah Vandale has a role to play, and it happens to be one she enjoys portraying — that of the “vainglorious” and villainous SmackDown Women’s Champion.
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“I love [being a heel],” Carmella said. “I love to be talky and tell everyone how good I am. I can kind of relate to that just a little bit. In everyday life it’s not something I would normally do, but there’s a little bit of the real Carmella inside of Carmella.”
Given how long it's been since Carmella turned heel, it's almost hard to believe that she was booked as a babyface character when she made her main roster debut after the 2016 brand split. Prior to that, she was known on NXT as the hairdresser, then valet of Enzo and Cass, though she was already a promising in-ring competitor at that time. In storyline, it was Enzo and Cass who had trained her to become a wrestler, though hardly anything has been mentioned about this connection since Carmella's SmackDown Live call-up two years ago.
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There are some wrestlers who are best booked throughout their careers as babyfaces, while others are said to be more suitable as heels and nothing more. Carmella appears to be close to the second category as SmackDown's heel women's champion, as she's proven to be a very effective villain thus far. We're not sure how much longer WWE will let her hold the blue brand's women's title, but regardless of what happens, she's more than exceeded what many fans might have expected from the 2016 brand draft's "Ms. Irrelevant."