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Before she was Amy March in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women or the May Queen of Midsommar, Florence Pugh played real life WWE star Paige in Fighting With My Family. Yep, the It Girl of 2020 kicked off her incredible 2019 by playing a professional wrestler in a movie co-starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. It’s a charming, funny, heartbreaking, and inspiring film directed by none other than British comedy sensation Stephen Merchant — and Fighting With My Family is now streaming on Hulu.
Fighting With My Family is based on an hour-long documentary of the same name that was produced for British television in 2012. The Wrestlers: Fighting With My Family followed the “Knight family,” a Norwich-based clan that was fully devoted to wrestling. While the documentary was being filmed, the “princess of the family,” teenage Saraya-Jade Bevis, was scouted by the WWE. While the doc follows the family’s exhilaration at Saraya’s big chance at stardom, Merchant’s movie takes us to the trials and tribulations that followed. Saraya adopts the stage name of Paige and struggles to fit in while back home, her brother Zak struggles to deal with the fact that the WWE doesn’t want him.
Produced by The Rock and WWE, Fighting With My Family purports to be an honest retelling of events. But anyone who has seen the original documentary will know that key details were cut from the comedy. Not only that, but the movie ends — SPOILER! — on a totally triumphant note and doesn’t bother telling us where Paige is in 2020.
So what’s the true story at the heart of Fighting With My Family? Where is the WWE’s Paige in 2020? What did Fighting With My Family leave out? Here’s everything you need to know about Florence Pugh’s Fighting With My Family.
WHAT DOES THE FLORENCE PUGH MOVIE FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY GET RIGHT ABOUT PAIGE’S RISE IN THE WWE? WHAT IS TRUE IN FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY?
Because it’s loosely based on a real documentary, Fighting With My Family is actually surprisingly close to true events. You know, for a feel-good sports movie.
Just as depicted in the film, the Bevis family — professionally known as the Knights — all wrestled together in independent promotions throughout the UK. Patriarch Ricky Knight (Nick Frost) turned to wrestling after a life of crime and wife Saraya (Lena Headey) also found salvation in the sport after a rough spot living on the street and abusing drugs. Ricky’s older son Roy was in prison and Zak (Jack Lowden) struggled after being rejected from WWE. That’s all true! In fact, Stephen Merchant told the DGA podcast, The Director’s Cut, that he learned about Zak’s parallel journey while researching the film and knew it had to be featured.
Also, as the final moments reveal, Paige made her big WWE debut on the Monday Night Raw following Wrestlemania XXX. She defeated reigning Divas Champion AJ Lee (Thea Trinidad) and became the youngest Divas Champion ever. After that, she became one of the biggest stars on the WWE women’s roster and helped usher in the “Women’s Revolution,” along with current stars Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch.
WHAT DOES THE FLORENCE PUGH MOVIE FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY GET WRONG? WHAT IS THE TRUE STORY BEHIND FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY?
So, there are some key facts missing from Fighting With My Family. For instance, Zak kept trying to audition again and again after his failed audition with Paige (and suffered an injury afterwards). Paige spent years as a major force on WWE’s NXT circuit, which barely gets any attention in the film. There is one show that Paige does in the film where she is mocked, but in real life, she spent years as one of the most popular wrestlers in NXT. Furthermore, Vince Vaughn’s character Hutch Morgan is not a real person, but an amalgamation of a bunch of trainers and managers at the WWE.
However, the one key fact that is cut from the film that might drastically alter your opinion of the Knight family is Saraya’s older sister. Oh yeah, there’s another girl in the family. Ricky’s older daughter Nikki is featured in the doc. She seems to be the only person concerned about the beauty pressures that her sister will experience in the WWE (and even gifts her with a free teeth whitening out of her aesthetician studio). Nikki was a teen wrestling star known for donning a schoolgirl uniform. At 13, Japanese promoters wanted to bring the girl to Japan under contract for three years, but she didn’t want to go. Apparently, her father was furious with her.
What’s fascinating about Nikki’s omission is that it helps the film craft the story of Ricky Knight as a quirky father figure obsessed with wrestling and not a stage parent putting his ambitions ahead of his kids’ physical and mental health. I mean, Fighting With My Family flirts with that within the Zak storyline, but ultimately, Nikki’s story is cut completely.
What’s also cut? Paige’s ultimate fate.
WHERE IS THE REAL PAIGE IN 2020? WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY ENDING?
Here’s the big bummer that Fighting With My Family leaves out: Paige is no longer wrestling.
In 2016, Paige was suspended from the WWE after testing positive for illegal substances. At this same time, she was undergoing neck surgery for injuries sustained in the ring. In late 2017, she returned to wrestling. However, by April 2018, she had to retire from in-ring competition because her neck injury had become so bad.
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WWE ironically has their own documentary from this time period, which you can watch for free on YouTube. In December 2017, Paige sustained a really bad neck injury while wrestling at a WWE road show with Sasha Banks. While at the time, she considered it a “speed bump,” doctors would later tell her that she was lucky that she wasn’t paralyzed and that her wrestling career is over.
Since then, Paige has continued to appear at WWE events as a contributor and as a manager for other acts. She is also a cast member on E!’s reality series Total Divas.
As for what happened to Florence Pugh after this movie… She’s currently nominated for her first Oscar for her work in Little Women and will co-star in Marvel’s Black Widow this spring.
