Just as Sean Morley expressed enthusiasm about the character, McMahon laid out some cautionary words. “‘Take at least 24 hours [to] contemplate this character. I need you to feel comfortable with it. Because if you don’t feel comfortable with it, it’s not going to work,'” McMahon told the wrestler.

Less than 24 hours later, Morley called McMahon and the controversial gimmick was officially in the works. Once the WWE machine began building up the Val Venis character, a series of vignettes began to air showcasing his lifestyle on and off the set. The most notable of those aired on the May 4 episode of “WWE Raw” where Venis was seen getting cozy with popular real-life porn star Jenna Jameson. According to Morley, the vignettes were shot at a WWE executive’s house, much to the chagrin of the executive’s wife.

“The Jenna Jameson vignettes were shot in Bruce Prichard’s house,” Morley revealed. “I don’t think his wife was too pleased about having Jenna Jameson in her house, but it is what it is. I didn’t know about any of this until after the fact.”

As part of the Venis character, Morley would often add sexual innuendos in his promos, many of which were meant to annoy the men in the audience. He revealed that many of those suggestions came from McMahon, who was hands-on in ensuring the character got over on WWE television — which it did. 

“Vince would constantly push the idea to me that, ‘When you create these jokes, they have to be constructed in a way where the adults will understand it, but the kids will be like, ‘Why is everyone laughing?’ What’s so funny about it?’ To me, that’s a little bit [an example] of Vince exhibiting morality in his product, which I didn’t think about until several years after the fact. That was something that constantly stuck in my head.”