Layla has explained why she declined the Playboy cover.
The former WWE star has recently resurfaced in the wrestling world after spending a decade out of the limelight following her WWE departure back in 2015. She spoke to Chris Van Vliet for her first detailed interview in many years, where the former Divas Champion talked about things such as how she got into wrestling, CM Punk coming up with the LayCool name, if she will ever return to the ring and more.
The wrestling veteran was also asked about the rumors of being offered a Playboy cover during her WWE tenure. Layla confirmed the story, noting that it came after fellow WWE alumni Maria Kanellis was featured in the magazine. The idea was for the trio of Kelly Kelly, Brooke Adams and Layla known together as Extreme Expose, to be featured in the magazine as a group, but she was not so sure about it. After the initial refusal, they also made individual offers to her and Kelly for a huge amount which she again refused:
“Yes. Well, actually, it wasn’t just me at first. So, what happened was we were called into the office, and it was Kelly Kelly, Brooke Adams, and myself. I think it was 2007, I think Maria actually did the cover, and they were like, we want to do extreme expose for Playboy, and I was like, no. I’m not too sure what they said, but then because I didn’t want to do extreme expose, they offered Kelly Kelly and myself individually, and I think they’d offered me like $250,000 to do it. I was like, no, I’m not doing it.”
Layla was then asked why she turned down the offer. The former Women’s Champion revealed that she has Moroccan heritage and her family are immigrants who moved to England. The retired wrestler and model explained that her career up to that point was already a lot for her family to accept, and she was scared of offending them. Though the former wrestling star later joked that she is a little sad at not accepting the offer because she could have retired the same year with that kind of money.