Origin of Mankind/Mick Foley in 97

I was watching the interviews that Jim Ross did with Mankind
in 97 recently, where they explored Mick Foley’s real-life history.

Because of how different that series of interviews was from
anything else they’d done around that time, I have to wonder – who masterminded
those? Obviously, they worked for moving Mankind away from Paul Bearer (the
Bearer-Taker storyline’s own direction to elsewhere had a hand in that too, but these worked
for giving Mick his own new direction to go in after Revenge of the Taker), but they
were also something of a curveball. So what’s the behind the scenes on these?

I'm sure someone who's read Mick's book more recently can tell you off the top of their head better than I could.  But yeah, it was an amazing way to build sympathy for him and foreshadow two new characters.