AEW star and wrestling legend Chris Jericho recently looked back on one of the most unique and memorable segments in the history of AEW Dynamite: the “Le Dinner Debonair” song and dance number with Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF). The elaborate musical segment, which aired in October of 2020, was a major departure from the typical pro wrestling television format and drew mainstream attention, even being listed by The New York Times as one of the “Best Performances of 2020.” The segment was a key part of the long-term storyline between Jericho and MJF, and it remains a beloved and often-discussed moment for AEW fans.
During a recent appearance on Busted Open Radio, the former AEW World Champion explained how the creative and ambitious idea came to be.
“That was an idea that we had, where I guess MJF had just seen the Elton John movie that had come out, the biopic, and he wanted to do some kind of an Elton John-type fantasy sequence, and Tony [Khan] didn’t want it to be fantasy. He wanted it to be real. So I said, ‘Why don’t we do like a big kind of a Busby Berkeley dance routine from like the 40s,’ and that’s kind of how it started. If you remember, we were like eating dinner and then suddenly this whole back room opened up and here we are to do this huge dance, dancing and singing routine and we had actually recorded the vocal earlier at my house and so we had sang the part, and we just had to worry about doing the dance routine and we filmed that in about five hours on a Tuesday night before it aired on Wednesday.”
Jericho also revealed that the segment almost didn’t make it to air as planned, and they were nearly forced to perform it live.
“There was a point in time where we didn’t think we were going to be able to get it on, and Tony was like, ‘You guys are going to have to do this routine live.’ We can’t do this live, we’re in the ring, like what do you want us to do?”
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