CJ Perry has revisited an early entertainment credit that came years before she became widely known to wrestling fans as Lana, recalling her time as a background dancer in the 2011 film Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son.
Perry appeared in the third and final installment of the Big Mommas movie trilogy in an uncredited dancing role. While the appearance was a small part in the larger production, it has taken on new significance in hindsight because of one specific sequence she witnessed while working on the film: a stunt performer going through a table.
For a performer who would later absorb a number of memorable table crashes during her WWE run, the moment became an unexpectedly fitting piece of her pre-wrestling story.
Perry remembers working as a professional dancer
Confirming that she was involved with the film, Perry described the experience positively and explained that dancing was her role on the production.
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“I did, I did. That was so fun. I was a professional dancer in it.”
The film, released in 2011, included Perry in a cafeteria sequence. She specifically remembered the scene because it took place in Atlanta and featured a major practical stunt involving a performer crashing through a table.
That kind of movie-set action left a strong impression on her. At the time, Perry was seeing the mechanics of a stunt sequence up close, including the preparation around the table spot and the work of the stunt performer. It was not simply a scene playing out on screen; it was a firsthand look at how physical action is built and executed in a controlled production environment.
“We had a cafeteria scene where he goes through the table, and it was in Atlanta and I’ll never forget that. That was the first time I saw a stunt move and an action move like that and him going through the table and the stuntman and I just thought it was so cool.”
Her reaction was immediate. Perry said she came away from the set thinking, “I wanna go through a table.” At that stage of her career, it was simply excitement about a dramatic stunt. She could not have known that table spots would become a recurring visual element of her eventual wrestling career.
An unexpected connection to Lana’s WWE journey
Perry’s recollection is especially notable because of what followed after she entered WWE and became Lana. While she was initially presented most prominently as an on-screen manager and personality, her time in WWE eventually included some physically punishing story developments of her own.
Among the most remembered was her series of encounters with Nia Jax. The repeated table crashes became a conspicuous part of their on-screen interactions, turning Perry’s old movie-set wish into a very real — and far more painful — reality in the wrestling ring.
Perry jokingly connected her Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son memory to that later stretch of WWE television.
“Little did I know that I was gonna be going through almost 10 tables by Nia Jax, The Samoan Dragon,” she laughed. “Little did I know that was in my destiny ahead.”
The remark captures the unusual overlap between acting, dance, stunt work and professional wrestling. A table spot in a movie is planned for a stunt performer within the framework of a filmed scene. Wrestling table spots are also carefully planned and require extensive cooperation, training and timing, but they arrive in an environment where performers must keep a match or segment moving in front of a live audience and television cameras.
For Perry, the bridge between those worlds is unusually direct. She saw a table break in an action-comedy setting years before taking some of the most recognizable table bumps associated with her WWE character.
From entertainment work to wrestling visibility
The anecdote also offers a look at Perry’s entertainment background outside the ring. Her appearance in the film came through professional dance work, a skill set that predates the version of Perry many wrestling viewers came to know on WWE programming.
Dance and wrestling are distinct performance disciplines, but both demand body control, awareness of space, precise timing and an ability to perform for a camera or crowd. In Perry’s case, her recollection of the film set shows that her eventual path in wrestling did not emerge in isolation from her other entertainment experiences.
Her role in Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son was not a featured acting credit, and she was not credited in the film. Still, the footage has drawn attention from fans because it documents a part of her career well before the Lana persona became established in wrestling.
It also underlines the range of environments Perry has worked in over the course of her career. Before being involved in major wrestling storylines, she was on a feature-film set as a dancer, observing the kind of staged physical spectacle that would later become familiar in a different form.
Why the table memory stands out
Table spots have a unique place in professional wrestling. They are often treated as turning points in a feud, a way to create a striking visual, or a means of escalating the intensity of a rivalry. Because a broken table is immediately understandable to an audience, it can give a segment a sense of consequence even when no championship is involved.
That is part of why Perry’s repeated encounters with tables were so memorable. The spots made clear that her character was enduring an ongoing physical ordeal, and the repetition created a recognizable association between Perry, Jax and the dramatic aftermath of a table break.
Her use of “almost 10 tables” was delivered in a lighthearted tone, but the broader point remains clear: the young dancer who was fascinated by a stunt performer crashing through furniture eventually experienced that same visual spectacle firsthand in a wrestling setting.
There is also an important difference in perspective. When Perry watched the cafeteria stunt in Atlanta, she was watching from the outside as part of the film’s dance team. In WWE, she was no longer an observer. She was the performer at the center of the moment, with the crowd and cameras focused on her landing and the fallout from it.
A full-circle entertainment story
Perry’s memory from Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son is a small but revealing chapter in her broader career. The film appearance itself may have been uncredited, but it gave her an early view of a table stunt that remained with her long after the production ended.
Years later, that experience became easy to connect with her wrestling history. What once looked like an exciting bit of movie action became something she would encounter repeatedly as Lana, particularly in the storyline involving Nia Jax.
The story is not that Perry predicted her future in wrestling. Rather, it is an example of how seemingly minor moments from one stage of a performer’s life can gain new meaning after the fact. A dancer on a movie set saw a table spot and thought it looked exciting. A WWE personality later found herself going through tables often enough to joke that it had been part of her destiny.
For fans who know Perry primarily through wrestling, the 2011 movie appearance adds another layer to that familiar image. Before the high-profile WWE segments, before the repeated collisions with Nia Jax, and before table bumps became part of her on-screen history, CJ Perry was a professional dancer enjoying an uncredited day of work on a film set in Atlanta.
That day stayed with her. And in one of wrestling’s stranger full-circle connections, it helped foreshadow the kind of stunt-heavy moments that would later become attached to her own career.
Darryl Polo
Darryl Polo is a passionate wrestling fan covering WWE, AEW, TNA and beyond. He loves great rivalries, breakout stars and the moments that keep fans talking long after the bell. How we work.