WWE Hall of Famer Paul Heyman is widely considered to be one of the greatest minds in the history of wrestling. From his beginnings as a ringside photographer, to managing stars in WCW, to running ECW, all the way up to WWE where he has helped make the likes of Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns the best versions of themselves, Heyman has always had an eye and an ear for what could work in wrestling. On a recent episode of his “What Do You Wanna Talk About?” podcast, current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes let actor Timothée Chalamet in on a secret about Heyman and where he has recently been pulling some of his influences from.

“He sits in the corner of the Gorilla position, he’s got his own little spot right over there, and really one of the–we call them super geniuses, where you’ve got like a [Martin] Scorsese] in the film world, he is a super genius. But this the thing that people don’t know, when you talk about your segment for that night ‘Hey, I feel like I should have something. I should be smart to this. I feel like I should empty the pockets on this. I feel there’s more.’ When you talk about it, he does not go with wrestling parallels. He’s not going to show you a clip of Jake Roberts and Rick Rude, he could, but what he does is, it’s lately ‘Hey check out this Gary Oldman clip. Check out this Billy Bob Thornton clip.’ Those are where he likes to go.”

Heyman often cited that music influenced the way produced ECW back in the 1990s, comparing the company to the grunge sound that was slowly becoming more popular than the heavy metal of the 1980s before Nirvana came along and made grunge a mainstream sound.

Please credit “What Do You Wanna Talk About?” when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.