Hemme Hits Hollywood

Christy Hemme has learned that being the darling of the WWE is far from punishing

At 24 Christy Hemme has played every kind of fantasy girl the male mind can conjure: cheerleader, music video dancer, Hooters waitress on--yes!--roller skates, pudding wrestler, giggling Juggy girl on The Man Show. And now, to complete the résumé, Hemme steps into her latest role as the WWE's newest RAW Diva, having beaten out nine other beauties in a grueling competition finally settled by the fans. Hemme jumped into the contest in her usual way: high-octane. "I don't do things unless I go full-on," she says. For the Diva Dodgeball challenge, for instance, she overcame a sprained ankle to crush one competitor. For the cream pie fiesta, she zestily clapped one onto her bikinied tush and strutted around the ring as the audience went bonkers.

But Hemme is no diva. She's talkative and friendly and has a boisterous laugh. She's the type of girl who is close to her family and signs autographs for hours after wrestling matches because "it makes me happy when I make someone else happy." Today, as she lounges in the WWE's sleek New York City office, she's making the cubicle dwellers happy in a clingy black sweater, pinstriped pants and a checked newsboy cap. "Normally I'd be wearing jeans," she says, stretching out her five-foot-five frame. "But for the WWE we have to dress in business casual everywhere we go." Her trademark fiery red hair spills luxuriously down her back. "And yes, this hair is all real," she says with a laugh. "Guys come up behind me all the time and put their hands on it, and it's like--smack!--'That's mine!'" On her right wrist is a tattoo of a little red heart, in honor of her late mom. "I love hearts, and my favorite color is red," she says. "In my bedroom I have all kinds of hearts everywhere."

Hemme is constantly in motion, leaping up to make a point, gesturing with her hands, unleashing that rowdy laugh. This is a woman who likes to have fun. "I've always had this energy," she says. "Always. I mean, I drove my parents crazy growing up. I have so much energy, I can't sleep much. I just wake up and think, Okay, I've got a lot of stuff to do." It's no surprise that this free-spirited California girl is adept at seemingly every sport in the Western world: snowboarding, capoeira (a Brazilian martial art), skiing, dirt biking, wakeboarding. "Anything that's active and crazy," she says. "I can ride a horse, too."

At the moment, she's in motion without a special someone. "I don't have a boyfriend," she says. "But I am a girlfriend kind of girl. I'm not a dater. I don't want to put my energy into meaningless dates with people I'm not going to be serious with." She smiles wistfully. "I'd like to meet somebody and give them all my love," she says. "But with what I'm doing right now, it's obviously difficult." Indeed, Hemme works 51 weeks a year. She travels every week from Los Angeles for three nights of wrestling matches in various parts of the country, then hustles over to her RAW gig, which is shown live on Spike TV every Monday night. Then it's back to the West Coast for a few errands, and the whole process starts anew.

Hemme says she isn't attracted to a particular type of man. "If you look at the people in my past," she says, "they are all completely different. But one quality I see in all of them is that they were all very passionate. I'm most attracted to a man who cares about the things he likes to do, who relishes what he does day to day." Her head is also turned by physical quirks. "I don't want a perfect guy," she says. "What's hot to me are interesting things like a scar on a man's face or a crooked tooth. Weird, kooky things."

The ability to ride a motorcycle is also a plus. Mention the words Harley-Davidson and Hemme lights up. Her father taught her to ride when she was three. "I would be thinking, This is really scary, but I'm going to do it," she recalls. "I would never tell him I was scared. And I loved it." Her dad also taught her to be independent, a lesson she absorbed so well that she moved out of her folks' house in Temecula, California at 17. She and three other girls took an apartment near her family. "We just went crazy," she says. "We were loud and had parties and had a really fun time." She subsidized this fun by working at her father's insurance company until she decided she wanted to be a Hooters girl.

"When I first got to Hooters I thought, This is fun, but how can I make this more fun?" she says. Then she remembered seeing old photographs of Hooters babes wearing roller skates. Management balked when she proposed the idea, because each waitress had to buss her own tables and haul tubs up and down a staircase. "I was like, 'Screw you. I'm wearing my roller skates!'" she says. "I always had this strange fetish about being Rollergirl." After signing a waiver, the determined Hemme won her right to haul dirty dishes down stairs on skates. "I got really good at it," she says.

One night at a bar, in what sounds like the beginning of an excellent adult film, Hemme met a group of former professional cheerleaders. They told her they were getting ready to attend the annual biker rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. "I was like, 'Yes!'" she says. "I love Harley rallies." They left the next day. "All we did was pudding wrestle and sell photos of the girls," she says, "and I ended up making best friends." The gang decided to form a dance troupe called Perfect Angels and started performing at every Harley rally they could find. "We'd just show up and say, 'Can we work here?'" Who would refuse them?

After five years of that, Hemme tried out to be a Juggy dancer on Comedy Central's The Man Show. "I auditioned (text concluded on page 164) Hemme(continued from page 134) by jumping on a trampoline in my bikini," she says with a giggle. Twice she was rejected, but the third year she returned to her roots: "When I dyed my hair red, everything started clicking."

She stands up to do a catlike stretch. We decide to take a walk around New York City to continue our conversation. In the elevator she recounts how, after a year spent Juggying, she began thinking of becoming a WWE Diva. "I had been a big fan of the WWE when I was a kid," she says, strolling down a midtown sidewalk. "Undertaker was my favorite." A friend in the wrestling industry discouraged her, saying she was too small. "I was disappointed, because the WWE is so me," she says.

When the Diva search started last summer, she wangled an audition. She felt right at home--the crowds weren't so different from those in Sturgis. "I really get along with bikers," she says as a businessman passes her on the sidewalk and does a comical triple take. "I know how to talk to them, and we party together at night. The WWE audience is the same."

Hemme leaped right into the Diva Search, and the audience quickly got behind its red-haired California spark plug. The only part of the competition that bothered her was the backbiting among the contestants, both on- and offstage. "I'm used to being in a group of girls where everybody gets along. I'm not used to being mean and vindictive," she says. "But now we're all friends." Hmm, really? "Really!" she says. "We talk all the time."

When Hemme aced the contest last September (earning a one-year contract and $250,000), she was ecstatic. "Literally the next day I flew to Cancún to do a Divas photo shoot," she says. "I absolutely love doing sexy photo shoots." The thrill has yet to wear off. "Do you have any idea how exciting the show is?" she says as a couple passes her. The man stares, mouth agape, while his scowling girlfriend elbows him. "It's live, so it's mayhem backstage. And then in the Diva locker room it's so great. If a guy could be a fly on the wall he would be so happy, because all the girls are running around naked."

Since her victory Hemme's schedule has been frenetic (peaking with WrestleMania 21 on April 3), but she did pause long enough to spend a bit of her prize money. "I bought a Harley," she says proudly. "I got a Dyna Low Rider, which is a big bike. Chrome everything, custom everything. I was like, 'I want a bigger engine, I want it to be heavier, and I want to go faster!'" She laughs delightedly. "I looove to go fast," she says. "Big surprise, right?"

"I like different kinds of music, different kinds of food. You can put me in any situation and I'll be happy."

"I knew in my soul I belonged with the WWE. If you put me in a bikini in front of a few people I'm kind of shy, but if you put me in front of thousands of hollering fans I'm comfortable. It's like, 'Hey, guys!'"