Redmond feels indebted to Paquette.
The friendship between Jackie Redmond and Renee Paquette was delved into while Redmond was on Gabby AF. Redmond stated that Paquette has been a great mentor to her.
Jackie shared that Paquette was a judge on a show that ended up landing her a job on the same network Paquette worked at. She expressed that she’s forever grateful to her.
First off, she is such an amazing person. You started us off with pumping my tires about being genuine and stuff. Renee (Paquette) is that way. Renee is somebody that is such a great teammate. She’s been a great mentor to me. Even though time will go where we don’t talk for a while, any time I reach out to her and need something or vice versa, she’s always been there and always been really cool about that so, I have all the time in the world for Renee but, we go back so far. Renee and I met before she was ever even at WWE, because she started in sports at the same network that I did and I did a reality show in Canada at the time that was called Gillette Drafted: The Search for Canada’s Next Sportscaster. Picture, like, American Idol but for sports broadcasting. That’s what it was. There was three judges, you had challenges, someone would get eliminated. The line was like, ‘You will not be drafted.’ It was a whole thing and Renee was on that panel of judges. She was working there. She had already started establishing herself as a sports personality in Toronto and in Canada, and so, I won the show, it’s not a big deal. Season three. Only girl to ever win it, and so, Renee though was on that judging panel so she had a hand, quite literally, in deciding if I was gonna win this show and be given a job at this network. So, that alone, I feel indebted to her in a lot of ways for the rest of my life. But even after that, she was always so amazing with advice. Even when she left and conquered the WWE world, any time I reached out, she was amazing. If I was covering a SummerSlam and wanted to interview her, she made sure it happened. If I wanted to just have sushi with her, despite being so insanely busy and popular and all of that, she would do that stuff so, she’s amazing. She’s been so, so instrumental for me and then outside of all of that, even if she had never done anything for me and was horrible to me, I would still respect the sh*t out of her because she, in a lot of ways is what I — when I started out — aspired to be. I think Katie Nolan had a lot of this as well which is she was a woman in a male-dominated space that wasn’t afraid to just be who she is and make jokes, laugh at jokes, not be serious, be serious, have an opinion, have some personality. She really wasn’t afraid to live outside of the box… I think it’s people like Renee and Katie Nolan like I said. I mean, Michelle Beadle. All those people that did that are the people that I’ve always really admired and Renee is certainly at the top of that list as a Canadian, and I’ll never forget, I can’t remember the exact wording but I remember early on, she told me, ‘You know what? People are gonna think what they think anyway so f*ck ‘em. Do you. Do it your way,’ and so, I’ve always had a lot of admiration and respect for her and still do to this day… She’s a beast. She’s a beast.
Redmond is a host/interviewer for WWE and the NHL. Paquette is an interviewer/show host for All Elite Wrestling.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Gabby AF with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
