“We have to tell this woman’s story”: Ash Avildsen on bringing the incredible life of pro-wrestler Mildred Burke to the screen in ‘Queen of the Ring’
When I asked Ash Avildsen, “So, where did you get the idea for Queen of the Ring?” the first-time director replied, “It was all thanks to Jim Ross.”
That name might not mean much to cinephiles, but to wrestling fans, it’s instantly recognisable. Ross, known for his signature cowboy hat and iconic commentary, was the voice of WWE for years and now works with All Elite Wrestling. For a film exploring the roots of modern professional wrestling, it’s fitting that Ross was the one who first asked Avildsen the pivotal question: “Have you ever heard of Mildred Burke?”
Avildsen, who runs the hard rock and heavy metal label Sumerian Records along with its comic book offshoot, Sumerian Comics, was eager to make his debut as a film director—and he had a story he was passionate about. But since it involved wrestling, he knew he’d need guidance to get it right. That’s where Ross came in.
“I wanted to make a fictional, PG-13, feel-good love letter to all my favourite wrestling stories and books from the ’80s because I felt like that just didn’t exist out there,” Avildsen explained. “When I called him to ask if he would work on it with me, he said he would, but he asked if I had ever heard of Mildred Burke, and I never had. And he said, ‘I really think you should check out this book, Queen of the Ring. I feel like it should be a movie’.”
So, Avildsen duly picked up a copy of Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeff Leen’s The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and The Making of an American Legend and burned through it over the course of one frenzied weekend. “It was one of the fastest books I’ve ever read in my life,” he gushed. “I was so enchanted with her story and all of these things I just never knew happened, like with women’s wrestling being illegal, and the shoot matches with the live audiences, and the single mother element of it.”
With genuine emotion underpinning his words, he added, “I was raised by a single mum, so that hit me heavy. I just called him back Monday morning. I was like, ‘Dude, forget about the fictional thing. We have to tell this woman’s story.'”
When Avildsen acquired the film rights for Leen’s book, though, he invited another person into the process of condensing the 368-page tome into a two-hour screenplay. Before he knew it, he was having dinner with Ross and his father, John G Avildsen, the Academy Award-winning director of Rocky and The Karate Kid. Avildsen had grown up knowing he was the famed director’s son, but didn’t actually meet him until he was 34 years old.
“It’s a whole other conversation,” Avildsen admitted, “But yeah, I obviously knew who he was. I had his last name, and there were legal things throughout growing up with him and my mum.”
As he began to work on the script with his father, Avildsen realised how much it was bonding them. “We both read the book independently and underlined our favourite scenes and lines and then compared them to see if our tastes were the same on what to take from the book for the screenplay,” he smiled. “We had so many of the same ones, which was great. It was such simpatico.”
Even though his father knew little to nothing about professional wrestling, Avildsen revealed that his experience making fictional sports movies was invaluable when figuring out how to craft Queen of the Ring in a way that would appeal to audiences who were also unfamiliar with wrestling. “Obviously, it’s an underdog true story,” Avildsen explained. “His big sports films, not all of them, but the biggest ones he was known for, were fictional. This is non-fictional to a degree, but it was great.”
“It was fun seeing him discover pro-wrestling because he didn’t know anything about it,” he smiled. “So, he was like, ‘Wait, the ref is in on it, or he’s not in on it? Or they knock the ref out to create the drama? Oh, that’s great!’ He immediately saw the theatrical entertainment value of pro-wrestling, and was instantly kind of hooked on it. He wasn’t familiar with it at all, but he was really, really entertained, as he learned from reading the book how it all worked. He loved it.”
Sadly, John passed away in 2017 before Avildsen had finished writing the screenplay, but he still counted the time they spent working on it as a positive for their relationship, which didn’t always have a strong foundation. “It was special,” he said.
It was a long road, but Avildsen was finally able to begin shooting the film in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2023, with his Sumerian Pictures producing alongside Intrinsic Value Films. The first time he saw star Emily Bett Rickards (Arrow) inhabit Mildred on-set, it validated a casting choice that came about in an unusual way. “When I set out to find who could play Mildred, at first, I had to see who had a natural physique that would be believable,” Avildsen explained. “You can always build muscle mass, but the way they’re naturally built has to be believable, especially with how Mildred started out wrestling men, and just being as physically strong as she was. So, that narrowed it down a good bit.”
Amazingly, Rickards wasn’t sent by her agent to audition for Avildsen. Instead, he simply found the perfect leading lady by scouring the internet. “I just got lucky looking online,” he chuckled. “I was looking at an agent’s roster for an idea for Mae Young” — an iconic female star very familiar to Attitude Era WWE fans who was eventually played by Clint Eastwood’s daughter Francesca — “and I saw a picture of Emily, and then I go, ‘Wow, she has the look and a physique that could work.’ I was just like, ‘Man, she has the face and the charisma just coming off the photo.'”
Avildsen had never seen Arrow, the CW superhero show that Rickards starred in for eight years as computer whiz Felicity Smoak. “I didn’t know who Emily was,” he admitted. “And our ongoing joke is she didn’t know anything about pro-wrestling. So, I didn’t know anything about her; she didn’t know anything about pro-wrestling, and together we created what will hopefully be a movie that people watch many years from now.”
With his lead in place, Avildsen began assembling the rest of the cast, which was no small feat considering the limited budget he had to work with, the sheer volume of characters in the script, and his relative inexperience as a director. “It’s challenging to get a big-name cast for indie films by directors that don’t have a big resume under their belt,” he said, “And period-piece indie films are very rare because it’s just hard to pull off. So, we were fortunate to get who we did, because we actually got some very recognisable actors who have wonderful credits and did terrific performances in the film.”
Indeed, Avildsen was able to fill out his cast with names like Walton Goggins (The White Lotus), Deborah Ann Woll (Daredevil), Josh Lucas (Yellowstone), Cara Buono (Stranger Things), and Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf). In essence, Avildsen approached all these people on a wing and a prayer, hoping the stirring story of the first million-dollar female athlete in history would sell them on the project. More often than not, it did.
“I have a theory that most actors take roles based on one of three things, and it just depends on who they are and where they are in their life currently, on which one’s the most important,” Avildsen mused. “But it’s either the script, the director, or the cash. It wasn’t the director or the money for ours. It was clearly not the money because we were a small indie film. I think for most of them, it really was just the script, because the story is so enchanting.”
He added with a grin, “As much as I’d love to say, ‘Oh, it’s because I was the director,’ that’s not the case. Maybe one day, but we’re not there yet.”
From the start, Avildsen was adamant that he needed honest-to-goodness pro-wrestlers in the movie because it would lend the piece verisimilitude, provide some familiar faces for wrestling fans to get excited about, and make day-to-day shooting easier. To play June Byers, who once held the Women’s World Championship for a decade, he cast Kailey Dawn Latimer, better known as the AEW wrestler Kamille. Toni Rossall, also known as the current AEW Women’s World Champion ‘Timeless’ Toni Storm, played Clara Mortensen, while other female wrestlers like WWE’s Naomi, OVW’s Mickie James, and AEW’s Britt Baker also appear in minor roles.
“Toni was terrific,” Avildsen gushed. “Did all of her own stunts, obviously, which is a big reason we were able to get the in-ring action we got. And the same thing with Kaylee. They did all their own stunts, and they took bump after bump repeatedly as we moved the cameras around, and got all the coverage we needed. I don’t know that we would have been able to do it on our timeline if we didn’t have real wrestlers in those roles, because there would have been way more stunts, and it would have just taken way more months of training for another actor to pull all that off.”
He added, “I hope both of them do more acting because people have loved both of them in the movie.”
Given that Rossall’s current ‘Timeless’ gimmick features her evoking the Golden Age of Hollywood with a presentation similar to Mortensen in the film, this journalist felt he would be remiss if he didn’t ask if she was inspired by her time on Queen of the Ring to create that character. Avildsen kept his powder fairly dry, confessing that he never outright asked her about it. However, he added with a vaguely knowing half-smile, “I’m such a big fan of hers. I feel like there are things out there, maybe in other interviews. Wherever there’s smoke, there’s fire, you know what I mean? I’m sure there’s something there that probably played a part.”
Ultimately, Avildsen is exceptionally proud of Queen of the Ring, a labour of love that sometimes seemed like it would never be made. Hell, even when he got close to the finish line, the Hollywood strikes that blighted 2023 shut the production down with only six days left on the schedule. Thankfully, he applied for an exemption and was granted it, but it goes to show that the road to a completed indie movie rarely runs smoothly. Indeed, Avildsen noted, “It’s really hard to get independent films made. Like, anytime an independent film gets made, I always tell people, it’s nothing short of a miracle. It’s a very challenging business.”
In truth, the fact that Avildsen was able to do all this while simultaneously running a record label and a comic book publisher is nothing short of incredible. It all begs a vital question: When does he sleep?! With a hearty laugh, the workaholic director answered, “I normally sleep between three and ten am. I’m trying to get better. I have a son now who wears me out and helps me get to bed earlier.”
All jokes aside, though, Avildsen did confess that his workload has occasionally gotten out of hand over the years, but he believes he’s in a good place with it now. “With the label and the comic book company, it’s been overwhelming,” he explained. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t, but I’ve been fortunate to be able to hire incredible presidents who run the different divisions, so I can focus on my passion: storytelling.”
As for the future, Avildsen has a vision of building Sumerian into as trusted and recognised a brand in movies as it is in music and comics. “Outside of films that I either write or direct, I want to help produce other filmmakers and help get their stories out,” he mused. “There are film labels now, like A24 and Neon, who have brand power, which is so hard to build. Those companies have done it so successfully in such a short time. So, it’s very inspiring. I hope that we can do that with Sumerian, the way we’ve done it on the music side and as we’re doing now in comics.”
If everything goes to plan, Avildsen will soon begin production on one of three scripts that he is passionate about. Amusingly, though, he admitted that none of them are sweeping historical stories featuring an unwieldy cast of characters like Queen of the Ring. “I feel like, after going through Queen, it was my Moby Dick!” he smiled. “A movie based around two or three characters sounds fantastic. This will be a walk in the park.”
The director also has extremely high hopes for Queen of the Ring’s May 9th, 2025, video-on-demand release. Concluding, “Hopefully, once we’re out on VOD and streaming, more and more people fall in love with this era of women’s wrestling, and more stories from that time can be told and it can be expanded on. But we’ll find out in May.”
