Hollywood Stuntwoman Breaks Down Her Career in Stunts

Hi, I'm Shauna Duggins, and this is Notes on a Scene.

[explosion]

[exciting synth music]

[swords clatter]

[door crashes]

I've been a stuntwoman for

18 years-ish, and then I've been coordinating

for probably about 10 of those years.

I've been a gymnast my whole life,

so performing, flipping, anything with your body,

that's just kind of been

what I've been doing since I was six.

And then when I moved to L.A.,

I went into a gym that had open gym,

and there were all these stunt guys,

and a couple stuntwomen,

and it was like This is an actual career?

You guys do this for a living?

This is the coolest job ever!

[dramatic music]

[both scream]

[dramatic music]

Charlie's Angels will always be so dear to my heart.

It was my first big movie.

It was a lot of firsts for me.

I think my favorite stunt, I would say,

would probably be the helicopter work,

other than being in Hawaii and taking a helicopter tour,

it was the first time I had really worked with a helicopter,

and, luckily, it was with Craig Hosking as the pilot,

who's amazing, I'm 20 years old,

and I'm being told Hey, just hang from the skid,

drop down from your knees, catch Lucy's character,

and you're saftied off by this.

And then I think another one I'm really proud of

would be, it's not as cool of a gag,

but it was the big stair fall with Cameron and the bad girl,

and it's because it's the first stair fall

I had ever done, and they said

Well, only advice I can give you for a stair fall

is just go as aggressive and hard as you can.

Oh, okay.

And they say So now, we're gonna build a platform,

they're gonna jump off the platform, hit the top,

and then they're gonna fall together down the stairs.

It was built, and sure enough,

the bell falls, we dive through the doors,

hit the thing and go down the stairs.

It was the first, I would say,

that wasn't a fight or gymnastics,

it was the first stunt somebody said

Be aggressive and go for it.

Coordinating is a combination

of the physical and the mental.

You get to sit down with a director

and with the creators, and you say

What's the vision you're trying to create with this?

And then you come back and you

figure out how to bring that version to life,

or you add to it and make suggestions

and collaborate with everybody, and find the best product.

[exciting synth music] [Debbie screams]

[exciting synth music]

[Debbie screams]

[crowd gasps] [crowd cheers]

That guy just did a backflip!

[crowd cheers]

[exciting synth music swells]

GLOW is a really unique experience

in the creative process,

because, from the very beginning,

Liz and Carly have said

We really want our actresses

to be able to wrestle.

They hired one wrestler, Kia Stevens,

and she is a rock star in the wrestling world,

she is an amazing actress.

[crowd boos] Y'all afraid of me, right?

And then all of our other actresses are

actresses, musicians, comedians,

and they are amazing in their own right at what they do,

and so now they're coming in

and they're completely out of their world to start with,

and we're asking them to look like professionals in a month.

And when someone struggles with something,

you have 12, 13, 14 girls lifting her up,

and then when someone gets something

they've been working on,

they're all so excited for each other,

and it's really, really empowering,

it's beautiful to watch.

When I started GLOW,

I didn't have a ton of experience with wrestling,

so when I took my first meeting,

I just said I think the best way

to help us and teach these women as quickly as we can

is to bring somebody from the wrestling world

and we'll team together.

They'll know the nuances of the wrestling world,

and that's been Chavo Guerrero Jr. for us.

And, um, Chico?

Chico Guapo.

And so then we collaborate together,

and we'll talk about stuff,

so between the two,

we're teaching stunt world and wrestling,

and it made me respect and appreciate them

even so much more.

We have a lot, a lot of fun.

There's a lot of trial and erring

and laughter in there, to say the least,

[laughing] when we're playing around and trying.

[crowd cheers] Two!

[crowd cheers] This is GLOW, season two,

Liberty Belle is high, and she is wrestling with Zoya,

and she ends up breaking her ankle.

It was really important to us

to do very similar choreography,

so you knew that it was the same match

that they had trained,

but that you saw the difference in Liberty Belle.

If you see the training sequence,

you see her more together,

she does the moves, but she's working with her,

and in this one, you start to see

everything is a little bit crazy,

and then the moves, instead of it being together,

working with Allie, here,

they're not really working together anymore,

she's off on her own path,

so we wanted all the moves to have a similar feel,

but just enough on edge.

[crowd cheers] [Debbie grunts]

[both groan]

So now, she grabs her here,

which she's supposed to do in the choreo,

but she's very aggressive with her,

she starts to kind of control her more

than working with her partner.

So, normally, when she brings her into this supplex,

she has her in the position,

she's gonna have a hand on her front hip, and lift her,

and she's gonna also help and drive it over,

so it's the combination between the two,

but if you'll see in this,

she doesn't check in with her at all,

which wrestlers do, we just don't see it.

As soon she grabs her, jerks her around, she throws her,

so that's kind of another thing with the character,

of switching it to where she's just taking control.

Here, you can see this hand on Betty

is where she's assisting and pushing.

This arm is also around her neck,

so she's pushing her over,

and Allie here is also taking some of it in herself,

like she's doing a flip to her back,

so she'll go [whoops] and land on her back,

and she has to drop straight down and land on her back.

This is where the timing comes in,

if she pushes too soon, or her leg is late,

you have an off-kilter, it doesn't go smooth,

and she's the one at risk,

'cause her neck is the one coming over.

And the job of Bashir over here

is he's trying to always be in the mix

without being in the way.

He'll step over here,

and then he'll see her lift,

and if he's here, he's gonna get landed on,

and it risks Allie's head and neck,

and then he knows at a certain point

Okay, I've got to come back over here out of the way.

And now, usually, the other tricky part

is you have camera in the ring with them.

The camera is over here,

and it's on a Steadicam rig in the ring,

so you have a camera operator who's moving around,

and you have Bashir who's moving around,

and now you have two actresses

who are performing and flipping,

and trying to be aware of where everybody else is.

But you can see how much this takes together,

and no matter what, she's still gonna land on her back,

so no matter how padded this is, it doesn't feel good,

and it's not a soft pad 'cause you can't hide it.

We made ours as nice as we can for them,

it's two inches of high-dense foam,

and every wrestler comes in and goes Oh my god,

this is the best wrestling ring we've ever been in.

This is amazing.

But it's still hard, it's jarring on your body.

You train it and rehearse it

and rehearse it and rehearse it,

but at the same time, it is two actresses doing this,

which is pretty incredible.

[crowd cheers] [Ruth groans]

So now you can start to see her

kind of crazy's coming out.

[crowd cheers] [Ruth groans]

[Bash] I don't think she's gonna

survive the wrath of Liberty Belle!

[Shauna] In this choreo, she's supposed to throw her leg,

but she's not supposed to just start to take control.

[crowd cheers] [Ruth screams]

[Bash] Wow, this is extreme, people!

So she's got her in a lock here,

and now she is grabbing a hold,

this is a correct lock,

where she actually has her knee joint,

and she can take control and pivot her,

it becomes a pivot point,

and she's gonna pivot her underneath,

and Allie starts it and gives a good push

at the beginning to help,

but again, her head has to clear underneath

and get in between her,

so Allie has to help and clear herself to get her through,

Allie's coming underneath, and you see her head clearing,

and now she's spotting it,

she's got her hands ready to land,

and then Betty is stepping over her,

but you also, you know, don't want to step on her fingers,

you don't want to kick her,

so there's a lot going on

between each other's legs and head.

She's supposed to put her ankle in a lock

and twist it to appear

[Ruth screams] that she's hurting her,

but she doesn't check in to make sure

that they're okay, she's trying to check in on the bottom,

and Liberty Belle is doing her own thing up on top,

and goes too far.

[screams] [ankle snaps] Debbie!

[dramatic music] [Officers shout]

[Sydney] Base, plan B better be in effect.

[Officers shout]

[dramatic music swells]

[dramatic horn flare]

I think the building was 12 stories,

most people are like What's below you?

There was concrete below me,

[laughs] there was nothing there.

So I am hooked to the helicopter,

so there's a line there, which is, you know, good and bad,

if anything happens to the helicopter,

I'm not getting away from it and getting clear,

but if I miss the skid, would just dangle below it,

so we did the first two,

we put it about where I thought I could catch it,

we caught it, I swung and it was good,

and then they said We have that piece of the catch,

can we put it out further

so we can really see you stretch as far as possible?

So I said Do you need me to catch it?,

and they said If you can, great,

if not, it's okay, we have that,

so I put him out another few feet further,

and just dove as far as I could,

and I just caught it with my fingertips,

and then slipped under

and then dangled below the helicopter,

so he had to then come down,

hover on the ground while they get me released,

and then he can land.

[crowd cheers] Clothesline.

[Chico grunts]

This is our finale episode of season two,

and we have the battle royale going,

and then our guys come in because they want to save face,

and they decide to wrestle them.

[crowd cheers]

So we have two professional wrestlers that come in,

Chavo Guerrero Jr. being one,

and you'll see Chavo and Betty,

they'll start to communicate with each other,

because this, in theory, has never been rehearsed,

this is on the fly, so what it's meant to do

is to show that our actresses have escalated to the level

at this point to be able to just jump in the ring

[snaps fingers] and call moves to each other,

and have moves called to them,

and be able to be a teammate to them,

and to be an equal to him,

and he is such a good wrestler

that she's gonna do her part,

and he's gonna make her look amazing.

[crowd cheers]

[Chico growls] [Debbie screams]

[crowd cheers] Come on, Liberty Belle.

Come on, Liberty Belle! [Debbie screams]

He says We'll do a 12 o'clock,

he puts her up to the top,

her hand is right here, basing on him,

and then he'll do the same,

so she'll go [whoops] straight up.

If she doesn't help, her 100 pounds

becomes, you know, dead weight of lifting 100 pounds,

so even though he is that strong

and he is lifting her, you can see right here,

her hand is basing on him.

He's got her, which makes it really hard,

I mean, the wrestlers are used to it,

but normally, when we rehearse,

we're in sweats or we're in leggings,

and you can grab the top of the pants

and really help, and then we have to remind ourself

that we're always in leotards,

so there's not much to grab.

He's also got his arm right here basing,

so she has her shoulder resting on his

to take a lot of the weight,

so she's got a lot of her weight here,

and a lot of her weight here,

so he's pushing her by this and by this.

[crowd cheers]

[rock music swells]

So we wanted a version of the head scissor,

but knowing that we had the luxury to get to use Chavo

and his amazing skills, we could enhance it a little bit.

Betty now is the top portion of the head scissor,

and we just added an extra spin

and let her kind of fly like a bird,

like she just gets to own it and be Liberty Belle,

and he now makes her look incredibly good.

And now she's taken control and will flip him

as she comes down [whoops], down here, and he'll flip,

so the power changes there from him being in control to her.

[crowd cheers]

I have hopes that the U.S. and Mexican relations

can only improve in the future.

[crowd cheers]

And Betty getting to just ham it up

because Chavo will milk it as long as she needs.

And this move...

[synth music swells] [Liberty sings]

She did a version of this to Kia earlier in the season,

so we've kind of wanted this to be her signature move,

where she goes [sings]

and salutes because she's our Liberty Belle,

and you can see the combination.

She had to commit blind, run in, half-turn, and commit

and wrap her legs around something that she doesn't see,

with complete trust that he's going to grab her here.

She drops down, pushes back up into this,

and then she'll throw down and come into a pin move to him.

I think the fun thing with GLOW

is you're not doing a fight scene

where every move is life and death.

With this, it is for fun,

you have glitter and big hair and leotards,

and, I mean, look at these socks,

and it's about the fun, it is about the show,

so every move is about telling the story

and making the show bigger and more fun

and more interesting for the audience.

You'll see the floor will bounce a little bit,

and everybody always thinks

Oh, it's like a trampoline!

Oh, it's not.

It's metal, and then wood planks,

and then the foam on top,

so all that is is the wood just giving a little bit,

but it's definitely not like a trampoline.

Normally, in the wrestling world,

they actually put mics on it,

and they love the sound

because it makes it sound bigger

and more intense when they hit,

so when you do a big flip to your back

and you hear [imitates crashing],

it makes it feel harder, and we love that,

except that they have so much dialogue in there,

that we have to mask it so that we can hear them speak.

[exciting synth music] [crowd cheers]

Ready to lose to a girl?

Just get my face on camera.

What do you want to do?

Think you can do a backflip?

Shit yeah, I can.

So now you'll see when she gets up on him,

she's gonna communicate with him,

Hey, can you do a backflip?

She starts to talk, and she's hiding it,

and meanwhile, the whole time she's performing,

there's still that communication,

which they do it in the ring with wrestling,

you just don't see it all,

whether it's through taps, whether it's through help,

whether it's through talking.

[exciting synth music] [crowd cheers]

[Debbie screams] [crowd cheers]

[synth music swells]

That guy just did a backflip!

And the timing on this was really, really, really crucial,

because we had it in a slow-mo camera,

so you had to get her under there all the way,

otherwise, it looked like she was under before he flipped,

so she's coming [whoops] underneath him,

and there goes Chavo with the flip and lands,

and Chris normally has not seen it until the day,

and these eyes are usually very genuine,

and I think he, in the sweetest possible way,

is like these ladies' biggest fan.

He comes in, he's so impressed,

he supports them, he cheers them on,

it's really neat because he and Marc Maron

are really the only guys that are always there [laughs],

so it's like 15 ladies, and Marc and Chris.

[crowd cheering] [exciting synth music]

[Chico shouts] [crowd cheers]

That's the same thing, it's the combination

of she's lifting him but he's also helping her.

He's gone! And she's back to the ladies.

With any fight scene, and wrestling being the same,

you are only as good as your partner,

so I can throw the best kick or the best punch,

and if they don't sell a great reaction,

I don't look very strong, and vice-versa.

On G.I. Joe, the first one, I was in a mo-cap suit

'cause she's supposed to be invisible,

I throw this kick to the stunt guy's head,

and he sells this really great big reaction,

I stack the kick, he did this big front three-quarter,

the reaction was amazing, and then they said

We could see air, it doesn't work timing-wise,

Shauna, I need you to really kick him.

Okay, well, he's got headgear on, he'll be fine.

So the camera's coming down, I kicked him, I pulled it,

and I just got him at the tail end of the kick.

He went [makes blink sound], he went out for a second,

and then he just dropped.

And they come down and they're like

That kick was amazing!

Your reaction was terrible,

what happened to the reaction?,

and I was like Uh, because he went out.

I knocked him out.

Cut to take three,

I said I will stack the kick, they will never know,

I'll watch the elevator, you can do the reaction,

'cause no matter what, when you're kicked hard,

it takes a second for your brain to register it,

so you're always a little late,

so then he made me look incredibly strong.

It's the same with the wrestling.

She makes him look incredibly strong.

[crowd cheers] Holy shit.

I had worked with Quentin Tarantino first on Alias,

he actually came and did a guest spot.

I happened to be on Daredevil when they started Kill Bill,

and Zoë Bell, who's amazing, doubled Uma a lot,

and then I came in for the last fight sequence

with Uma and David Carradine.

They're on a patio, they both have swords,

they're sitting in chairs,

and the timing of when the chairs spin,

and the swordfight, you know, it's pretty cool.

[blade shimmers] [sheathe cracks]

On Iron Man 3, I doubled Gwyneth Paltrow.

There's a really fun sequence where she is there

with Robert Downey Jr., and they're in his house,

and the bad guys come in with the planes and the rockets

and they start to blow up the house.

We tested it and rehearsed it, and then on the day,

we did a ratchet, so at the same time,

it's all crucial timing,

and then FX is blowing everything, we're both on ratchets,

which are like air pneumatic cylinders,

and we get ratcheted back

about 15, 20 feet, and hit the wall.

They built this plate off of Robert's double and myself

and put the actors in it.

The funny thing with women is

you're in, you know, tight black pants

and a white shirt, hide the harness,

and then you have six-inch stilettos,

so I wasn't worried about hitting the wall,

I was worried about when you hit the wall,

you're going to the ground next,

so I actually had to try to keep my feet up,

and hit my body, because I didn't want to catch the heels

of the shoes and break your ankles

[laughing] because the heels are so tall,

so we did that, but the interesting,

they really did with that shot that was really cool

is he calls the suit on her,

so it's the first time somebody else is in his suit.

It was one of the coolest experiences,

to get to be the woman in the Iron Man suit,

I literally had it on, and it's so big,

and the top half is probably, I don't know, 50 pounds,

and the shoulders are like this, and you're like [groaning].

Trevor Habberstad, who had normally been in the suit,

was so sweet, and was like

Okay, I rest my arms here on the chair

to take the weight off the shoulders,

and he was giving me all the little tips of

how to last that long in it.

They put me in the suit,

and it was the first day I was in it,

and the helmet was too big, they're like

Just drop into frame,

and be like two or three inches off of Robert.

And so I go to drop in the first time,

and where I can see like this much,

the helmet's too big, it drops down,

so the eye holes are down here now,

and I was like Oh god, don't hit him in the face,

don't hit him in the face,

I can't see him, I can't see him,

I'm thinking I'm gonna be the first person

that drops in like this

and smashes Robert Downey Jr.'s face

and breaks his nose and knocks him out.

Everybody's really good at what they do,

but then you

add in

the costumes, the set, it's not a perfect circumstance,

so like gymnastics, you think

Oh yeah, I can do a backflip, no problem,

Okay, now can you do a backflip off of this table,

in stilettos, and I'm gonna have her step underneath you,

but don't hit her, because she's the $10,000,000 actress,

and then I'm gonna release doves.

And you're like Oh, yeah, I can... yeah.

I think they just wanna screw with you sometimes

just to see if you'll say yes.

[patriotic fanfare music] Oh, American sweetheart!

Girls like you used for toothpick in Russia.

This scene is from season three,

they've been doing the show night after night,

and they are bored, so they decide to play each other.

[crowd groans]

They both have different takes on playing each other,

which is fun, so they're kind of playing each other,

and they're playing each other's characters.

She has a very May Ann from Gilligan's Island

type of version of Liberty Belle [laughs],

and then Zoya Betty is definitely the sexier version of it.

So now, we tried to give them,

keeping their signature moves,

but now what you have to remember

is Betty's signature move is something

Betty is very good at.

Allie's signature move is something Allie is very good at.

And now we're swapping 'em.

So everything is a skewed version

of what they all know as their signature moves.

Now Marc Maron is in the ring,

so you have this third party, again,

who has never been in the ring before this,

so he's trying to figure out where to be

without being in the way.

It was a lot of Marc, stay back here,

don't step in here, she's gonna go this way,

she's gonna go this way, and if you go there,

you'll get kicked. [laughs]

He's jumping in and out.

[crowd groans]

[Bash] She's kicking it off

with a drop-kick to the diaphragm!

[Zoya groans]

[Bash groans] Taste my shoe!

[Shauna] So, again, she's selling to make her look strong,

and in the first season, we did an homage to that,

we had the opposite,

where Betty had her foot up on her face.

[Bash] Giving her some boot!

[crowd groans]

[Ruth groans] But this Russian's

not having any of it! [Ruth screams]

[Shauna] We have what's called a sunset flip in here.

But, oh, wait a minute! [both groan]

There's a reverse sunset flip!

One, two! So now Allie's

going to wrap her legs,

and she's gonna come down,

and she's gonna tuck her head down here,

completely trusting that she's gonna flip to her back,

without Betty, who sits back,

landing on her face or chest,

so she's gotta clear her and land over her.

Once she lets go, she's committed,

her weight's going forward,

so she's gotta wait, wait, wait, wait,

and now go, and then clear, so she doesn't land on her.

So you can see the timing between the two of them,

it's both actresses 100% complete trust in each other.

These two have some unexplainable

wrestling chemistry.

If Allie isn't sure with anybody else,

for some reason, when she gets in the ring with Betty,

it is a trust factor that's off the charts,

they both know each other and how they move,

and they have this chemistry with acting,

with dialogue, and with wrestling, it's incredible.

[Ruth shouts] Who knew this American

and this Russian knew each other's moves?

It's as if they played each other before!

Table-licking swine! [Debbie groans]

[Ruth exclaims]

[Shauna] Normally, Zoya is the heel.

[crowd groans] Do you like

my little slut ukulele?

And Liberty Belle is the babyface.

As Chavo would explain it, as the bad guy,

as the heel, you want to be booed.

If you are being booed, you are doing your job.

As the babyface, you want everyone to be rooting for you.

All of our babyface moves are pure and genuine

and they are strong, but they are legitimate.

Your heel, as your bad guy,

would come in and throw the underhanded kick,

or when the ref isn't looking,

do something that they shouldn't do,

so now that they've switched,

normally this hair grab is what Zoya would do

and whip her around by the hair,

'cause that's more of a bad girl move.

Liberty Belle is still doing it,

'cause she's always done that,

but we're just gonna soften it

and figure out how to make it not look so bad guy-ish.

And then Betty's gonna just

play her like a guitar. [laughs]

[Debbie roars] [Ruth shouts]

[crowd boos] Such a dirty mouth!

I hope my daddy isn't watching!

Oh, darling, I'm your daddy now.

[Debbie grunts] [Ruth screams]

Last year, with season one,

the first season with the Emmys

that GLOW was nominated for stunts,

I was nominated with the stunt coordinators

that have been my mentors, my peers, my friends,

people that I've trusted with my life,

they've trusted me with theirs,

so to get to celebrate that honor with them was huge,

but then to do it with a family like GLOW,

to get to be honored for a show

that you just feel so appreciative

and thankful to get to work on,

and then to add onto that,

it's stunts, but it's also actresses,

these actresses that became, as you saw, these wrestlers,

they're being honored for their work,

I mean, we see the product,

and I think we're so used to and jaded

to just assume that it's all stunts,

and in reality, I know how hard they worked,

I know how

hard they trained,

how much they trusted to get out of their comfort zone,

and how much they pull it off,

so it's a real honor to get to then

be nominated and then to win an Emmy

on a show that's so powerful.

The coordinator comes in from the very beginning

and sits with the director and says

What is your vision for this movie?

What do we want to see with the action?

What's the style?

And sometimes they have a distinct vision,

and sometimes they say

You know what, I love this, but let's play,

and then the team comes together, the fight team,

the stunt team, they all come together,

and they choreograph and play,

and then the director gets to

I love that, I love that, let's do this, let's do that,

and it becomes a collaboration.

It's an honor to be trusted with the job,

it's an honor to let you create,

and then it's an honor to be rewarded

with the fact that people enjoy it and enjoy the work

and enjoy the time in it.