Double Trouble
Stunt double Zoe Bell is the woman who put herself in danger on the set of Xena: Warrior Princess every day to make Xena's action scenes look realistic, as she tells Kate Barker...
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 23
Ducking, diving, flipping and flying - the infinitely flexible Xena has many skills.
Much of the Warrior Princess's ability can be of course accredited to Lucy Lawless, but next time you’re watching Xena perform some of her miraculous feats, look again. It takes more than one woman to fill the leathers of our hero…
Zoe Bell is no stranger to back-flips and butt-kicking. With a background in gymnastics and martial arts, along with the luck of being in the right place at the right time, Bell’s ‘mouldable’ skills vaulted her into the job of a lifetime. In fact, she was training with ex-Xena Stunt Coordinator Peter Bell (no relation) without having any idea who he was!
“My dad is a doctor,” she explains, “and one time, Ryan, one of the Xena stunt men, came in to him with an injury. Dad took down the phone numbers (of the Xena stunt crew) and gave them to me. Then I saw the call on television for stuntees, so I rang Peter and handed in my CV. That just happened to be when he was looking for a new bunch of girls for Amazon High, and Geri, the previous Xena stunt double, had just left the show. So I went down to the studios, and I happened to have the right proportions and the right kind of background, and they put me in there. It was all a matter of timing.”
It may have been timing that got her in the door, but it was pure and natural talent - and the ability to learn quickly - that kept Bell performing Xena’s moves for over three years.
“At the beginning of Xena, it was very challenging,” Bell, admits, “because it was all completely new to me.” Three years later, however, Bell has had ample time to let most of the moves become second nature, and flying through the air is done with the greatest of ease.
“There’s a lot of rig work, which is mostly the same basic rig with different operations,” she explains, “although we do have the odd one that I have to learn front scratch. It's the same with the fights; there can be all different moves and different combinations of moves, but most of it’s not all that new and difficult for me anymore.
“I’m usually in a harness of some sort,” she continues, “and I have wires that come off my hips to pick points either off set or on the [raising platform] cherry-picker. The pick points are like pulleys, so my wires are attached to ropes that go through the pullies. At the other end are the big stunt men, and quite often they’ll just pull me and I’ll go flying into the air and do a flip or a back-flip or whatever it is that they need me to do. Basically, the rig involves me being in a harness and leaving the ground.
“If there’s a new stunt, we’ll have rehearsals that usually take half a day. But that doesn’t mean we’re doing it consistently for that half of the day. Most of it will be fiddling with pick points and dealing with where the wires are and how to combine the timing of everything. It’s not just me who has to rehearse it; it's all the other people involved too. Most of the time, if there’s a rig I haven’t done before on set, we’ll do one or two rehearsals before we shoot it. But on a good day, it doesn’t usually take long.”
It may only take half a day to practise a stunt, but that doesn't mean it always takes a short time to shoot. So how long does it normally take to shoot a stunt sequence? “It's hard to say specifically,” Bell replies. “For instance, it depends on the angle the director wants; it depends on how long it takes to relight it from different sides... Usually it involves filming two or three rigs from each angle, so that’s normally a couple of hours, depending on what the director wants.
“Sometimes they only want a basic profile, which only takes 15 to 20 minutes, so for that we can get through it really quickly. Sometimes it can take forever; sometimes you'll shoot part of the rigging shots at the beginning of the day, and the other part in the second half of the day. That’s because they’ll shoot everything that goes on from this angle, then swap to the other side and shoot the other way. A lot of time they’ll keep me on set and I'll be here just in case they need a Xena in the background or in case there’s another angle they haven’t shot yet. There are also times when they shoot everything they need, but then at the end of the day they'll shoot bits that are not absolutely necessary but would be very helpful if they had them.”
It sounds like some days on Xena can be very long. However, Second Unit is a more relaxed set than Main Unit, and it’s there that Bell spends most of her time. “I’m based on Second Unit,” she confirms, “and I probably work mostly with the doubles. When I'm on Main Unit it’s usually because I'll be doubling for Lucy, fighting another actor, and the person doubling that actor will be fighting Lucy.
Most of my time on Main Unit involves fighting or dealing with guests or regular actors, but on Second Unit it's generally doubles.”
An example of this is one of the confrontational scenes between Xena and Lord Belach (Marton Csokas) in The Last of the Centaurs. “They had a Belach double in there in the Main Unit to fight Lucy,” Bell explains. “And then we did it on Second Unit with the Belach actor and double and me.”
So basically it’s an on-call schedule. “I’ve never really put a stopwatch to the stunts, and I don’t want to!” she laughs. “There are some days where I’ll come in and I’ll be in the first shot. We’ll shoot a rig or two and then I’m out by 10am. We're one of the departments where we do get late calls and early wraps sometimes, which is cool!”
In her three years as the ‘action’ version of Xena, has there been anything that Bell has found particularly challenging?
“These days I can just about learn a fight in five minutes, then shoot it in five minutes,” she says, “as opposed to it taking all day and my going, ‘Someone go over this with me!’ It used to scare me, but now the basic routine is relatively easy.”
Now that Xena has hung up her chakram, what’s next for Zoe Bell? “I’ll have to have a look around for the first couple of months and see what happens,” she says. “I’d like to keep doing this kind of work if it’s at all possible. I’d love to go overseas and see what’s out there, and I’m willing to fight to get more work like this.
“I know that as long as I’m doing what I enjoy, the opportunities will pop up. Sometimes I’ll just go with the flow. But this is my career; my full-time gig. I’m hoping it will stay that way.”
So watch those reruns, Xena fans. “Once Lucy’s feet leave the ground, and in between that and her feel landing again,” Bell says with a smile, “that’s when you can guarantee you’re seeing me.”