Hannah Waddington, Winston Duke & Stephanie Hsu On Making The Fall Guy A Love Letter To Filmmaking

Inspired by the 1980s television series of the same name, The Fall Guy follows Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), a stuntman who returns to Hollywood after an injury seemingly ends his career. When he has the chance to work with Jody Moreno, the one who got away on her directorial debut, he jumps at the chance. Hoping to win her affection, Colt does everything he can to pull off impossible stunts during the day while searching for the movie’s missing star, Tom Ryder, at night tripping into a criminal conspiracy that could be even more dangerous than the stunts he performs on set.

The Fall Guy is a love letter to the stunt community and the making of an action movie helmed by David Leitch (Bullet Train, Deadpool 2). Leitch taps into his experience in the stunt world, first as a stunt performer and then a stunt coordinator, to bring an authenticity to The Fall Guy while also balancing comedy, action, drama, and romance throughout the movie. Ryan Gosling, who took the world by storm with his comedic performance as Ken in Barbie last year, shows off his wide range of skills as an actor, tapping into comedy, action, and romance throughout his performance.

Screen Rant interviewed Stephanie Hsu, Winston Duke, and Hannah Waddingham about their new movie, The Fall Guy. Waddington shared what drew her to the movie and how she took inspiration from The Fall Guy producer Kelly McCormack. Hsu discussed how her character is a love letter to PAs, and Duke explained how he portrayed the “brotherhood” of the stunt community in The Fall Guy.

Hannah Waddington Revealed That Her Love For The “Unbelievable Rollercoaster Movement Through [David Leitch’s] Movies” Is What Drew Her To The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy shows a heightened version of a film set with the unsung heroes of the filmmaking community, the stunt team, at the center of the action. Waddington, a longtime admirer of Leitch’s movies, brought her own experience with a particularly difficult producer into her role while taking style cues from The Fall Guy’s own producer.

Hannah Waddingham: What drew me to it was actually David Leitch because I’m a massive fan of particularly Bullet Train and Atomic Blonde. I love the fact that he has such unbelievable rollercoaster movement through his movies, and to have been on board one now where all the discs are spinning and smack into each other or they start moving together. The movement in his movies is quite extraordinary, so that was what drew me to it.

[As for your second question], it became far more of a catharsis, like two fingers. You’d do one here, but two fingers up to a particular producer in London; some dude who didn’t know how to conduct himself properly. He was kind of full of himself, and not for the greater good, so I wanted to put a bit of that sting into it. The tail end of Gail, when we really see her with the flip-top head fully open like; that bit.

But the appearance was very much our gorgeous Kelly McCormack with her brilliant, the way she dresses, I just think she’s so chic. I was constantly going, “Can we get one of those tops, or can we get that necklace?”

Hsu was also influenced by her own Hollywood experience, hoping that production assistants would see a bit of themselves in her character.

Stephanie Hsu: With every character I play, I like to plant a little secret of who I think it is for. And for me, Alma Milan is a little love letter for PAs specifically. I feel like they have one of the most grueling jobs on set, and it is often very thankless. You’re definitely always the person who gets yelled at.

For me it was just such a joy to get to be like, “Here’s a person who is on her way up and wants to be somewhere else within this industry, climbing up the ladder. But for now, this is where she is.” And one day she is going to be somebody, but for now she just gets to be a badass. A secret badass.

Winston Duke Explains How The Stuntmen & Stunt Coordinators Are “A Community”

Duke is no stranger to stunts and actually has experience with one of The Fall Guy’s fight coordinators, Jonathan “Jojo” Eusebio. He explained how that helped with his performance and understanding the community aspect of being part of a stunt team.

Winston Duke: I had the pleasure of working with Jojo on Black Panther as well. In that process, we got to know each other. He got to know how my body works, and we really took a lot of what we learned over there and brought it over here to have a little bit of a shorthand.

There’s a brotherhood. It’s a community, so I learned how much everyone is invested in making sure everyone else gets home safe. I learned how much investment there is in not just protecting your part of the community, the community extends to the entire set. When they make sure things are going to be safe, it’s to make sure that us, the bystanders, the actors, the extras [will be safe] – it’s an entire community effort, right? They’re shepherding an entire community. As an actor, I didn’t realize how much of that was the case before.

One of the biggest takeaways was that, and it really leaves each stunt person understanding that their stunt coordinator has their back. They’re the person to go to if you have a problem.

About The Fall Guy

He’s a stuntman, and like everyone in the stunt community, he gets blown up, shot, crashed, thrown through windows, and dropped from the highest of heights, all for our entertainment. And now, fresh off an almost career-ending accident, this working-class hero has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy, and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job. What could possibly go right?

Check out our other interviews with:

• Ryan Gosling & Emily Blunt
• David Leitch

Source: Screen Rant Plus